These recording sessions have thrown up a nice mix of games that I've enjoyed exploring. We kicked off with the aforementioned Ghostbusters, which is a great game that is still pretty enjoyable to play — though I'm definitely out of practice. It's a solid example of how to do a good movie license game: rather than adapting the story of the movie slavishly, you simply make something that fits in with the overall vibe and concepts of the license, and do something creative from there. Ghostbusters works well not because it's a good adaptation of the movie specifically, but because it's a good game about being the Ghostbusters.

Also on Atari 8-bit, I took a look at a shoot 'em up called Humanoid that was a very late release from a Polish developer, and appears to be a game that has "borrowed" (or possibly stolen?) all the graphics from Hewson's Subterranea and bunged them into a game that is a little bit different. I couldn't find the story behind this one, so I do find myself wondering if it started life as an official port of Subterranea that was subsequently cancelled, then they figured they might as well do something with the work that had already been done. Waste not, want not and all that.

Finally on the Atari 8-bit front, I took a look at a type-in listing from ANALOG magazine called Incoming! This is a very simple game in which you control a rotating but immobile machine gun turret, and have to blast down aerial targets. It initially appears simple, but gets impressively frantic as the stages progress, and there's a lot more to it than just simple blasting. Losing points for each shot fired forces you to be tactical, and the stages alternating between dropping paratroopers and city blocks on you keeps things thoroughly interesting along the way.

Switching over to the ST, I actually ended up recording four videos because when preparing my "A to Z" I inadvertently skipped the letter "E" completely accidentally, so I had to fit something in. First up, though, came "D", and I finally took a look at Driller, the first of the "Freescape" 3D games. I've been putting off exploring this one because even after reading the manual I didn't really understand how to play it, but having actually spent some time with it now I have a much better understanding of it.

The "E" I quickly had to fit in took the form of Paul Woakes' excellent port of his classic Encounter! to the Atari ST. This is a lot better than I remember, and I really enjoyed spending some time with this one. I love the 8-bit version but always had somewhat mixed memories of the ST version. Turns out that was mostly in my head; the ST version is excellent.

For "F" I brought in an all-time favourite: Flood by Bullfrog. This is an oft-forgotten part of the legendary studio's heritage, but it's a perfect example of what they brought to the table in the 16-bit era: lots of audio-visual polish and solid gameplay that provides interesting twists on conventional formulae. Flood is a platform game at heart, but its little tweaks to the basic genre standard make it thoroughly enjoyable, and still a lot of fun to play today.

Finally, for "G" I took on The Grail, a showcase title for the Talespin adventure game creation software package. While The Grail is only middling as a game in its own right, its existence as a quasi-visual novel long before any of the Japanese visual novels ever made it to the West is thoroughly intriguing to me — and makes me want to check out the Talespin software itself in its own right.

Anyway, all those are rendering and uploading now, so I think I can say I've had a nice, productive day. Now I think it's time to settle down for a few hours of Zelda! I've definitely earned them.

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The post #oneaday Day 887: PREVIEWS of FORTHCOMING ATTRACTIONS appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Today has been a day of pretty much nothing but Zelda, which means I don't have a whole lot to talk about other than Zelda, but I shall resist doing so for now as there has been a lot of Zelda recently. Instead, I thought I'd talk about how a midweek day off always feels just a little bit different from the weekend.

I'm not really sure why this is. I think it's most likely to do with the fact that you know under normal circumstances, at this time you would be doing work, but right now, you have no obligations. That, in itself, makes it feel like a separate and distinct thing — and, in my mind, made me feel like "I have earned a day off". Hence, the aforementioned day of nothing but Zelda.

But a day off from what if I'm already not working? Well, anything, really. I have some videos scripted and ready to record, but I thought about doing them today and my mind just went "nope, do as little as possible today", so for once I listened to it without guilt and did exactly that. I will probably make a start on these videos tomorrow.

In these busy, perpetually online days where at times it can feel like your whole life is on display whether or not you want it to be, it's easy to feel like you "should" constantly be "doing something". This is particularly true if you are someone who enjoys making things and posting them online — be they articles, videos, podcasts, anything like that. It's very easy to succumb to the temptation that "everything must be content" — when in fact, it's perfectly fine for some, even all of the things you do for fun, to be just for you.

I mean, yes, I am almost definitely going to write about Zelda when I've finished it, but writing about the games I have played is part of my process of enjoying them at this point. It helps me to reflect on what I've just played, what I liked about it, and it also, in years to come, serves as a record of the things I've enjoyed and the experiences I've had. It's nice to look back on all this, because it's surprisingly easy to forget individual things that you've spent your time doing as the years go by.

But aside from the knowledge I will write something up when I've finished Zelda (and likewise Final Fantasy Resonance), I am not worrying about turning these things into "content". I don't need to add another Zelda video to YouTube as there are almost certainly hundreds, thousands already. One might argue that, therefore, I don't need to add another Zelda article to the mix, either, but for me, posting a video and posting an article are two quite different things; the former requires a lot of forward planning to ensure I get the footage I want, while the latter is something I can do much more "on the fly" once I'm finished with something. And, as I say, it's basically part of my "hobby process" now, anyway; writing about the game and contemplating it after I've finished is as much a part of the routine as simply experiencing the thing.

Anyway, this is a lot of words to say I didn't really feel like making any videos today, so I didn't do that. I have enjoyed my day, regardless, and I feel somewhat revitalised to tackle the self-imposed challenges ahead of me tomorrow!

For now, though, back to Zelda…

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The post #oneaday Day 885: A day off is different from the weekend appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This is not a controversial opinion, I know, but let me talk about it a little bit, because I find my own response to the series kind of interesting. I have, over the years, convinced myself that I am a bit "meh" on Zelda as a whole, and I'm not entirely sure why, given how I've always had a good time with it. With the recent Switch 2 remake of Ocarina of Time, though, there really is no mistaking it: The Legend of Zelda is, to me, one of the greatest series of video games ever created, and continues to be wonderful to this day, with nary a misstep to its name (aside from the CD-i games, but those don't really count).

(This is not an invitation for you to tell me how much you don't like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. I don't care.)

I mentioned in my post last year that a lot of my… resistance, I guess you'd call it? Yeah. A lot of my resistance to the series over the years stems from that period when Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time were both the "big games" that my friends and I were playing through at almost the same time.

Final Fantasy VII had blown us all away with its spectacular, cinematic, deep and lengthy story and — to us as RPG newbies, anyway — unusual, interesting gameplay. Ocarina of Time, meanwhile, while undoubtedly a good game, just didn't feel quite as… impressive to our shallow, ill-informed eyes. We used to joke that after playing Final Fantasy VII, my friend Woody refused to believe that any game that came on fewer than three CDs would ever be any good — but we all secretly sort of felt something similar. Although in retrospect it's impressive quite what Ocarina of Time managed to achieve in 32MB of cartridge space — compared to Final Fantasy VII's three CDs, most of which were filled with FMV sequences — at the time it was hard not to feel like it was a bit less overtly… wow.

Then there was the "inverse hype" problem, where for a very long time prior to Ocarina of Time's release, it was hyped up as being akin to the Second Coming of Jesus, like all other video games were going to cease to matter; as if just standing within the shadow of Zelda 64 (as it was known prior to the Ocarina of Time subtitle being revealed) would cause every other game to spontaneously turn to dust and scatter on the wind. On the one hand, if you bought into this, it was exciting, but at the same time, it did, at times, feel a little excessive — especially for those of us who, at the time, had both PlayStations and Nintendo 64s and thus felt no real need for fanboyism or favouring one platform over another. Eventually, it just got kind of exhausting.

Looking back, of course, it was silly to compare Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time, as they're both very different kinds of game that can — and do — quite happily coexist. Knowing that also allows me to view the Ocarina of Time remake on Switch 2 through relatively clear eyes. And you know what it's teaching me? I've actually always liked Ocarina of Time a lot more than I had previously thought or cared to admit.

You might think that this is just the shiny new remake talking — but honestly, the remake is so true to the N64 original in terms of structure and gameplay that it is helping me appreciate and remember things about the older incarnation — things that are amplified, but not changed, in the remake. Consequently, I know that if I were to boot up the N64 version right now, I'd have as good a time with it as I am with the Switch 2 version.

Like, for example, I'm sure there are at least some of you out there who have always thought Zelda is kind of twee nonsense. Little fairy kid with pointy ears skips through the forest and beats a big bad guy? Childish nonsense, surely. But no; spend some time with the Zelda series as a whole and you'll develop a firm appreciation of the fact that it is actually surprisingly dark on a fairly consistent basis — with Ocarina of Time, in many ways, being second only to its direct follow-up, Majora's Mask, in terms of moodiness.

I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to say the game has been designed with adults in mind, which is something I would say about the Metroid series, but there is definitely a strong amount of "fairy tale fucked-upness" about Zelda that, with my old and jaded eyes, I feel that if anything, I am appreciating more now than I ever did back in the day. It's the subtle things; the things that you wouldn't necessarily notice as a wide-eyed child, but which you appreciate as a cynical adult. Especially, yes, That Bombchu Lady.

And when I think back on the time I have spent with the Zelda series over the years, I can honestly say that I've never had a bad time with a Zelda game. This curious sense of "resistance" that I describe above sometimes prevents me from making much progress with them — particularly the sprawling quests of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom — but, partway through Ocarina of Time as I am right now, I think I can quite comfortably and confidently say that yes, I am, in fact, a Zelda fan, and I really should get it out of my head that I am somehow not. And then, after I'm done with Ocarina of Time, finally get around to scratching Tears of the Kingdom off my "to complete" list, too.

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The post #oneaday Day 884: No more resisting. I am a Zelda fan appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This little encounter is actually quite important to me, because as those of you who know me reasonably well will probably know, I have had some… difficult experiences with people I thought were my friends of late, and that has left me feeling rather depressed, distrustful and hesitant to "let people in" — or perhaps to open myself up, to put it another way. It is something that, unsurprisingly, I have talked about a lot at therapy. Over the course of those discussions it has become clear — well, even clearer than it was — that I have been hurt by those experiences, and that, in turn, has left me feeling lonely, not great about myself generally, and somewhat adrift in terms of just… having people to hang out with.

I don't ask for much from friendships: just some people that I can see every so often, share some good times with and, ideally, share in the experience of the hobbies that we have always found enjoyable together. A willing ear during turbulent times is helpful, but to be honest, it's the first bit that I most keenly feel the absence of in my life right now; I just want to be able to share the things I love — and that, in some cases, I am proud to have been part of — with people I care about. Some of my fondest memories from the years and decades gone by are not big, huge, exciting events, but times I spent at someone's house, just hanging out, possibly intoxicating ourselves via various means, playing video games and making stupid jokes together. These days I can live without the intoxication part, but the other bits I really miss.

Which is why I'm quietly excited about this little meet-up that is happening next week. It's just a couple of friends and, again, we're not doing anything big: just piling around someone's house, hanging out, playing some games and probably having a few drinks. It will be the first time I have done this with people I regard as "old friends" for quite a long time; my wife and I have been enjoying playing some HeroQuest with a mutual friend (someone she knew and introduced me to, who has now become a "shared friend", as it were), so it's not as if I've been completely without social contact, but that has been an occasional thing up until now. (That reminds me; I should probably arrange the next session of that.)

I don't know what the evening will hold. I'm hoping to introduce my friends to the stuff I've been doing with Evercade, firstly because it's stuff I'm super-proud to have worked on, but also (mainly) because there's a bunch of multiplayer stuff, particularly from among the NEOGEO cartridges, that I think it would be fun to spend some time with — and I get the chance so rarely to be able to actually play this stuff with other people that I'm really excited about the possibility. I can see Doom going down particularly well. The Instagib mode we added is insanely fun and the only chance I've had to play it was when we were testing it in the office!

But anyway. Spend some time with the people you have, in the past, called your "friends". Just drop them a text or something if you don't have the time to hang out. I can guarantee they'll appreciate it.

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The post #oneaday Day 883: Just like old times... hopefully appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I have a few reasons for feeling a bit mixed on whether or not I want to go back. First and probably foremost is the fact that I'm very aware that, for several years, it completely dominated my gaming time. I don't resent the time I spent with wonderful people enjoying the game during that period — but I have always found it difficult to get that elusive "balance" between being able to enjoy a big, deep, time-consuming game like Final Fantasy XIV and still having a varied gaming diet elsewhere. There are a lot of games I still want to play, and I just worry that getting back into FFXIV — like really back into it — will mean I just never get to them.

The second is that I soured on the broader community as time went on. When I first started playing, the FFXIV community was one of the most friendly, welcoming, helpful communities I had ever played with, and this helped enormously with the sense of anxiety I felt over partying up with strangers for Dungeons and Trials. I even spent a bit of time as a tank class — in many ways the de facto "leader" of most groups, given that it is they who set the pace for everyone else — which is something I never thought I'd do.

Over time, though, things started to change. A lot of players started caring more about "efficiency" than enjoying the game. They'd speedrun through dungeons, pulling multiple groups of monsters at once and making the individual encounters considerably less interesting. They'd get pissy and abusive at anyone who wanted to enjoy the experience at a more leisurely pace. They ruined a potentially interesting mechanic called "The Hunt" by zergrushing every enemy that appeared as part of it with massive groups organised on Discord servers using bots. They made it nigh-essential to have spreadsheets and wikis open while you played certain parts of the game, rather than allowing you to enjoy it in a more freeform nature.

Granted, a lot of the game can now be enjoyed properly solo thanks to the Duty Support and Trust systems, but when you get to endgame, if you want to enjoy the raid storylines — which are often great! — you will still have to play with others. And, to a not-insignificant portion of the community, it seems there is only one way to play. The not-fun way.

The third is that prior to Dawntrail coming out, I ploughed through a New Game Plus run and straight into the expansions I hadn't yet done (Shadowbringers and Endwalker), burning myself out quite severely in the process. As part of this process, I started finding myself dreading the increasingly predictable structure of the game: go to new settlement, do story quest, suddenly sidequests pop up everywhere in the settlement. Do sidequests, advance main story a bit, suddenly a second set of sidequests pop up. Repeat until you get a bit of variation from a Dungeon or Trial. It got to a point where it just felt like exploring the world was becoming a bit of a chore, because there was no real danger from the enemies you'd encounter in the field, and nothing really to "find" other than the stuff you had marked on your map as quest objectives.

The third one is very much a "your mileage may vary" sort of scenario, I'm aware, and it may just have been that rushing through all those story quests made me cynical about the way the game is structured. It didn't prevent me from enjoying the game, and indeed the finale of Endwalker brought me to tears. I just didn't like feeling so cynical about a game that had been such an important part of my life for so long.

Thus, I'm rather torn about whether or not I'll go back for Evercold. Right now, I just don't really feel anything in the way of excitement for it, but at least part of that is down to simply not paying any attention to anything Final Fantasy XIV-related since the base story of Dawntrail. The rest is down to enjoying the varied gaming experiences I'm having away from FFXIV right now, and not wanting to end up back in a position where my own lack of self-control makes it difficult to still have those while playing FFXIV.

I'm probably overthinking it. I overthink a lot of things. I know I would go back in a heartbeat if I was able to help friends who had never played it before do a "story run" through the various main scenarios. But going back "just for me"? I'm not sure I have it in me.

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The post #oneaday Day 882: The Maybe-Returner appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For me, some of my fondest gaming memories hail from the mid to late 1990s. Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake are defining gaming experiences for me. Final Fantasy VII shaped my primary gaming tastes. And, of course, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a wonderful shared experience for all of us who owned Nintendo 64s at the time it came out. Which was, basically, everyone in my entire friendship group.

Now, nearly 30 years later, it's kind of amazing to think that I am still here, still playing games… and still playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Doom and Final Fantasy — albeit not in their original forms. I'm playing the Nintendo Switch 2 version of Ocarina of Time, which is beyond beautiful; I'm playing Doom on a console I helped bring to market, in a release that I wrote the documentation for; I'm playing Final Fantasy in the form of Final Fantasy Resonance, a game which is both an excellent Final Fantasy in the old-school mould, and a wonderful homage to Final Fantasy history in its own right.

It's kind of funny in a way. I often think about games that have come out in the last… 15-20 years, say, and wonder if any of them will ever have the same kind of cultural penetration of things like Pac-Man and Space Invaders. Games that, while you might not necessarily want to play them all the time, can be universally agreed upon to be both important and good. The games I've previously mentioned all fall into this category, too; Doom has endured for so long for very good reason, and has seen numerous rereleases over the years; Ocarina of Time is actually on its second remake and third rerelease after the Gamecube port and the 3DS remake; and Final Fantasy is a series that has very much moved with the times — not always in a way that everyone likes, but one cannot deny that it has always done its very best to stay up to date.

I look at something like Horizon: Zero Dawn — which, admittedly, is a game I didn't like very much — and wonder if people are still going to be talking about that in 20 years in the same way that the aforementioned titles are held in complete and utter reverence by both players and game makers. What about Gears of War? Halo? Gears is apparently having a bit of a comeback, but Halo has been absent from many people's lives for so long at this point that it has almost become irrelevant.

I wonder how much of it is down to a sense of universal appeal versus things that are ostensibly aimed at "adults". Of the titles I referenced above, only really Doom can, perhaps, be argued to be aimed vaguely in the direction of adults — and even then, not really. Doom is, at heart, a teenage, heavy metal, power fantasy. Even back on its original release, its violence was almost cartoonish, despite being relatively bloody; its "scary" elements tempered somewhat by a driving soundtrack and a relentless pace. People remember Doom and Doom II a lot more fondly than Doom III because Doom III tried to go all-in on the "this is a scary game for adults" thing, and while it was good — it really was! — you just… don't hear people talk about it any more.

And that's where I kind of fall with a lot of the modern games that seem to be a big hit one minute, then almost completely forgotten about the next. Sure, having a middle-aged protagonist who is sad and says "fuck" a lot is very much a sign of the times… but it doesn't have that same timeless appeal that things like Ocarina of Time and Final Fantasy do.

As someone interested in gaming history, I feel like it's going to be very interesting looking back on the last 15-20 years or so in retrospect. It's already interesting to look back on the Xbox 360/PS3 era, because there's a whole ton of stuff that completely flew under the radar on those consoles. That's a different thing from having timeless appeal, of course, but it can sometimes throw up some thoroughly interesting experiences.

That's probably a tale for another day, though. For now, I'll just say that the couple of hours of Ocarina of Time I've played this evening are absolutely marvellous, and I'm delighted that this remake has come out as well as it has. It strikes that perfect balance I was talking about the other day, where it is simultaneously respectful to its source material, and simply a great new game in its own right, for those who have never played it before.

I would play some more but I smell real bad so I better go have a bath.

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The post #oneaday Day 881: It is 2026 and I'm playing Ocarina of Time, Doom and Final Fantasy appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Remakes are on everyone's mind right now because the Switch 2 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is out tomorrow, and the reviews have been glowing. To most reviewers, it appears that nu-Ocarina is a respectful remake that simultaneously pays homage to the original and provide a solid, self-contained experience in its own right, accessible to newcomers as much as it is to series veterans — or, indeed, old farts like me who were There For It First Time Around.

My simple response to Jeff was that a good remake doesn't replace the original; it complements it. What happens next is down to the individual, with the remake pointedly not saying one way or the other is the definitive approach.

Someone who plays a remake could find themselves interested in the history of what they just played; having learned it is a remake of an earlier game, they could find themselves drawn down a rabbit-hole of investigating games from a different time — and, in the case of younger players, games that may well have been released before they were even born. This could, in turn, develop an interest in broader gaming history and retro gaming as a hobby — something which I, of course, would heartily encourage.

At the same time, someone who plays a remake could find themselves completely satisfied with the self-contained experience that the remake provides. They know it's a remake of an older thing, but they also know that it stands by itself and doesn't require or assume knowledge of said older thing. They can enjoy a brand-new, modern game that is informed by classic titles of the past, but not have to deal with all the challenges that looking into old games can present you with — whether that's dated visuals, lower quality sound, less refined controls and game design. These are not things that bother me personally, but I can imagine that someone who grew up with, say, the PlayStation 4 and Switch as their first gaming consoles might find it hard to go back to games from the original PlayStation and N64, for various reasons.

Then, of course, there are situations like the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy, where what they're doing is not really a "remake" at all, but rather a considerably expanded retelling of a story that goes off in some interesting other directions. These can still be responded to in both of the above ways, however; some folks who came to Final Fantasy VII Remake first might find themselves curious to play the original Final Fantasy VII, while others will be happy with the modern games as their sole point of contact.

Of course, I would absolutely love it if all people were willing to dive back into gaming history and give older games the time of day. There's still a ton of value to be found in older games — even in ones that, for example, use control schemes that have long since been abandoned in favour of modern analogue controls.

Take the original Tomb Raider, for example. This is a game designed entirely around its rather rigid, clunky-by-modern-standards controls. It is a product of its time and represents a style of gameplay that we don't really have in the same form any more — but it's still perfectly playable if you meet it on its own terms and learn how to play it. At the same time, I understand completely why the more recent Tomb Raider games have gone in a more "modern third-person shooter" kind of angle. But one absolutely does not negate the other, at all.

I know not everyone is a fan of them, but I like remakes. They provide a new way to experience an old thing — and, if you were around for the old thing's original appearance, might just remind you why you used to like it so much. And, at the same time, they make the old thing much more accessible to newer or younger players. What happens from there is really up to them — but I hope it's the beginning of an enriching, fascinating journey of discovery.

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The post #oneaday Day 880: Remakes and originals can and should coexist appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The Analogue Pocket, for the unfamiliar, is a premium-grade (i.e. quite pricy) retro gaming handheld, fashioned in a similar mould to Nintendo's classic Game Boy (i.e. it's a vertical handheld) and featuring four face buttons (plus Start, Select and a Menu) button and two shoulder buttons. It features a cartridge slot that takes Game Boy, Game Boy Colour and Game Boy Advance cartridges, and can play these right out of the box. With optional adapters (which appear to be perpetually out of stock) you can also play Game Gear, NeoGeo Pocket Colour, Atari Lynx and PC Engine/Turbografx-16.

Analogue Pocket has a couple of distinctive selling points. The first of these is its inordinately high-resolution (1600×1440) screen, which you might think is the last thing you need for retro games, but in fact it makes its benefits very clear almost immediately by accurately simulating the classic displays of the aforementioned handhelds — including the distinctive "dot matrix" look of the original Game Boy, the visible scanlines of the Game Gear and Lynx, and the "grid" pattern of the original Game Boy Colour screen. You can turn this feature off if you want, but it's implemented so well that it really does recapture the feeling of using the classic systems.

The second is that it is not a cheapo emulator handheld like the stuff from companies like Anbernic. It's an FPGA device, which means it emulates systems on a hardware level rather than simulating them in software. This, in theory, leads to much more accurate recreations of how the various systems work. Cores for the systems that take the aforementioned cartridges are built in to the Pocket, but the latest firmware updates allow you to install "openFPGA" cores on there, too, and these can be used with ROM files as well as original media. The openFPGA cores also cover consoles and computers as well as handhelds, allowing you to turn the Pocket into a portable powerhouse if you so desire — particularly if you pair it with its optional dock that allows you to connect it to a TV and use external peripherals.

It's an absolute delight to use. After a bit of fiddling around to get it set up — much less than a MiSTer, particularly now there are helpful tools available, though of course you have to avoid the AI shit — it's a wonderful bit of kit. Quick to start up and jump into a game on any of the supported systems, and pretty much flawless performance on almost everything I've played. The only games I've had issues with are a couple of Lynx titles — Gauntlet: The Third Encounter has some iffy screen tearing due to an odd refresh rate (plus the core doesn't seem to support display modes when you rotate the screen, as is necessary for that game) and Rampart refuses to display the image that is supposed to come up before the "rebuild" section but is otherwise fully playable — and everything else has been just as if I'd bunged in a real cartridge and was playing on a real system.

Its ease of use and portability means that I'm very likely to pick it up and just have a play with it when I'm at a loose end — and in doing so I've already discovered some delightful handheld games that I'd like to play more of. Plus SNES, Mega Drive and PC Engine games look amazing on it.

In short, this thing wasn't cheap, but it was a very worthwhile investment. If you enjoy handheld and retro gaming, I highly recommend one.

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The post #oneaday Day 879: Pocket-sized appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

As you can probably imagine, it is an enormous thrill and an immensely satisfying career moment to have been part of an official DOOM release — in this case, the Evercade version, for which I put together the text for the manual (paying homage to the original version's documentation), the digital descriptions (the stuff you see on the Evercade menu) and worked as part of the dev team, testing out various features and providing feedback.

We were working on this for so long, along with Banjo-Kazooie, that it felt like we'd never be able to just settle down and enjoy the fruits of our labours. But finally, I have my copy of The DOOM Collection for Evercade, along with three Evercade Nexus handhelds (plus all the myriad other Evercades I already have) and I can, at last, sit back and… well, play DOOM again.

It will probably not surprise you to hear that DOOM still holds up very well. I am currently in the middle of playing through on the Ultra-Violence difficulty level, which, I must confess to my shame, is actually a relatively new experience to me; traditionally I have stuck to Hurt Me Plenty and still find some parts pretty challenging. However, I've been really enjoying playing on Ultra-Violence; it really does ramp up the action and make things even more exciting, and it kind of feels like a brand new experience, even though I'm just going through familiar levels for the umpteenth time.

That said, there's still a fair old chunk of DOOM that I either haven't played or am just less familiar with. I've only played DOOM II through once in my life, for example, and I've never played the two parts of Final DOOM. I do have it in my head that DOOM II and everything that came after is significantly harder than base game DOOM — and I'm probably right about that — but I have successfully beaten No Rest for the Living and SIGIL in the not-too-distant past, so it's not as if I'm incapable of meeting these greater challenges. So I'm going to work my way through and enjoy every moment of this wonderful version of DOOM we've put together.

And this isn't the end of it, either; we have some really interesting plans for what we can continue to do with DOOM, which will likely show up at some point next year. We have a lot of other work to do first, though, so in the meantime I'm going to kick back on the sofa, grab my new Evercade wireless controller and once again indulge in one of my all-time favourite games — one I don't think I will ever tire of.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 878: I could probably play DOOM forever appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I had a really good time! And thinking about that has got me pondering how it would do us all good to just slow down a bit, pick and choose the things that we want to enjoy more carefully, and then actually enjoy those things to the fullest.

To be fair, this is something that I already do. A big change in my game-playing habits occurred… probably in the late '90s or so, but really in earnest from around 2010. I started finishing games. In my defence, earlier games from the 8-bit and 16-bit home computer eras were extremely difficult or even impossible to finish, but there came a point where it became practical, desirable and fun to play a complete game through from start to finish.

I don't know if it was the first game I ever completed, but one that really sticks in my mind was Super Mario World on the SNES. I got to the ending of that game and was blown away by how elaborate the credits sequence was. Of course, in modern terms, it's actually pretty simple — just a parade back through previous backgrounds, showing off all the sprites in the game — but back when I first reached it on my own, it was an incredible moment. Not all games have a satisfying ending like this, of course — particularly when you look at earlier titles — but there's always a special kind of thrill that comes with knowing you have beaten a game and seen everything it has to offer.

Since that time — and especially since Final Fantasy VII showed me how epic a finale sequence could truly be — I've really made an effort to try and beat the vast majority of the games I play. Except I've sort of fallen into a pattern of thinking that certain experiences are inherently more "worthwhile" in this regard; usually based primarily on how narrative-centric they are, and how long they are.

It's an easy mindset to fall into. Retro games in particular can feel rather "disposable" at times, given how easy it is these days to load up a handheld or emulation station with every game ever released for a variety of platforms, then promptly never settle on one thing to play, dipping into hundreds of things for a few minutes at a time and never really having a meaningful experience with any of them.

What you have to remember, though, is that every single entry in that massive ROMset you acquired via questionable means was once an individual release that cost anywhere up to £50 or £60. And back when that was the case, you made those games last. You made those games matter.

It's not hard to see how one can fall into a mindset where you inadvertently devalue short-form experiences or retro titles — particularly as most retro titles, when they do get an official rerelease these days, tend to come as big bundle deals with tens to hundreds of other titles alongside them for the price of one "big" game. I'm conscious of this with what I do for the day job: Evercade cartridges represent excellent value, particularly when compared to buying original media for platforms like the NEOGEO, but when you have 5, 10, 20 or more games on one cartridge, I don't blame anyone for treating the whole thing like a casual buffet when what some of these games really demand — or crave is perhaps a better word — is for someone to sit down with them for a protracted amount of time and take them seriously.

I wonder how many other people have had Namco Museum Collection 1 in their Evercade lineup since launch and have never played Mappy Kids all the way through from start to finish. Turns out it's quite easy, and pretty short! But I don't regret the time I spent playing it through last night; I ended up with a much better understanding of what the game is doing, and had an enjoyable, coherent experience as a result. Also the music in that game is brilliant.

And what about the more substantial games in that collection? I genuinely do wonder how many folks have got beyond the second mission in Metal Marines, because I know from firsthand experience how easy it is to sit down, play the straightforward but satisfying first mission and then think "oh, I better move on to something else".

Why? Why had you "better" move on to something else? I don't have a good answer as to why our brains work like that these days — other than to acknowledge that the modern media and particularly online landscape encourages this sort of attention-deficit behaviour, where everything is content, and all of the content you consume must be varied and engaging for a couple of minutes at a time, before something in your mind goes "NEXT!" and demands something new.

It takes work to resist that. But it's worthwhile to do so. If, in your travels through ROMsets, Evercade collections, retro compilations or anything similar, you have come across something that really looked cool or appealing in some way, but you only ended up spending 5-10 minutes with it, I encourage you to dedicate at least an evening to exploring it further. You might just be surprised at how much you can make one of these individual experiences really matter and feel worthwhile. Yep, even seemingly simple arcade or Atari 2600 games.

Plus, the bonus effect is that if you're one of those people who bemoans the fact that you "never have any time" to play video games any more, most retro games are pretty short! I beat Mappy Kids in a fraction of a single evening, and you can too!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 873: Enjoying the whole thing appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For the unfamiliar, Final Fantasy Resonance is an adaptation of the defunct mobile game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. This was, it will not surprise you to hear, a free-to-play gacha game, but when I gave it a try on its original release, I actually found it had some redeeming features — most notably the fact that it didn't seem ashamed of being a video game, which a lot of mobile titles do, inexplicably.

Anyway, I always thought it was a bit of a shame that what, in my limited experience, appeared to be a surprisingly decent Final Fantasy story was trapped in free-to-play gacha hell — particularly as the soundtrack was awesome. Alas, though, it was not to last; the worldwide game shut down in 2024 and the Japanese version a year later, leaving the tales of Rain and company forever consigned to oblivion.

Except! They aren't! Because Final Fantasy Resonance takes the first main story arc of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and adapts it into a proper, non-gacha, non-free-to-play game. And boy, they've done a great job with it, too — to such a degree that this stands up remarkably well as a possible future direction Square Enix might want to (but almost definitely won't) take the mainline series in for its next installments.

Final Fantasy is a series that has never been afraid of reinventing itself. Supposedly Hironobu Sakaguchi's attitude to the series could be summed up as "if it's not new, it's not Final Fantasy", and this would explain why every entry in the series to date has done something fairly to radically different from its predecessors. I, personally, love this, and have had great fun with the whole series, even the entries that "popular opinion" (spit) won't stop whining and moaning and crying about, like VIII, XIII, XV and XVI.

What Square Enix has basically done with Final Fantasy Resonance is go "all right you whining fucking babies, here is a very traditional Final Fantasy with random battles and little dudes lining up to take it in turns to whack monsters, only with very pretty modern visuals and an amazing soundtrack, are you fucking happy now?!" And I sincerely, absolutely hope that anyone who has ever complained about "the way Final Fantasy has been going" at any point over the last 30 years has picked this game up, started playing and gone "…well, all right, then, fair play". Because it is absolutely what people have been clamouring for, for decades at this point. So if they're not playing this, they don't get to talk about Final Fantasy ever again.

It's not just noteworthy for this angle, though. It's also just a damn fine RPG, and incorporates a lot of the elements I really like in a game like this. The turn-based combat is just turn-based combat without any QTEs or parrying or other bullshit like that. (I liked Expedition 33 well enough, but I could have absolutely done without its Souls-inspired elements.) It has a fun progression system that takes elements from Final Fantasy V, VI and IX, whereby you learn abilities from having "Visions" (actually characters from other Final Fantasy games) equipped, and once an ability is learned you can equip it independently of having the Vision equipped, allowing you to build your characters as you see fit. It has optional fast travel, allowing you to either journey between locations the old-fashioned way, getting into random battles on the way, or simply zapping to a location you need to get to for a quest. And it has Tales-style skits where your party members chat about things while you wander around on the world map.

The story also seems solid so far. It's oddly jarring to have a protagonist that is very… 16 to 32-bit in terms of how idealistic and positive he is, but it's a welcome, nostalgic feeling after so many games that are deliberately dour in tone. That's not to say the game doesn't have any darkness, either; indeed, I'm still in the first chapter, and there has already been one impressively fucked-up moment that I can only assume will get resolved more conclusively at a much later time.

Anyway, I'm having a blast with it so far, and thus I'm going to go and spend a bit more quality time with it right now. Cue That Fanfare…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 872: Resonance appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Anyway, yeah, I thought I'd update and reflect on my decision to refocus my YouTube channel back on the Atari computers that have always been so important to me, and it's been going well! Viewing figures for the last few videos have been very good (even bearing in mind YouTube changing the way it counts views a little while back), and I've been getting some good comments on each and every video, with a lot of regular viewers coming back for each new video.

In other words, I think this was the right decision. The temptation was always there to want to cover as much stuff as possible on YouTube, but in doing that you risk a few things: never being able to cover anything in as much depth as you want; never being satisfied that you've covered every thing you want; and never being able to nail down a consistent, recurring audience. Because while "retro gamers with broad interests" is definitely an audience, on a platform as saturated as YouTube is, specialising really does seem to be the way forward. As with, I would argue, pretty much all kinds of media; sadly, the mainstream video games media never learned this lesson and now we barely have any. But I digress.

I thought I'd take this opportunity to share my recent videos on the off-chance you've been reading this for God knows how many days and you've still never paid my YouTube channel a visit. I've somehow made 1.2 thousand videos on there over the years — although I will grant you that there are a chunk of those which are nothing but raw gameplay. The vast majority involve either my "live" commentary, or a reading of something I've written, though. The former, with a brief(ish) introduction to give some historical context, are where I've settled on what I enjoy doing the most; the latter occasionally break out and do very well, but the former is, for me, the more sustainable format that I can keep on doing without it feeling like work. Because I want YouTube to be a fun hobby, not something that becomes a second job.

Anyway, with that in mind, I don't make a lot of effort pushing these videos outside of their immediate audience and a cursory share on Bluesky when they're first published. I frankly cannot be arsed with all the promo work you're "supposed" to do if you're trying to build an audience, and to be honest, I've never really been trying to build an audience. All I'm doing with YouTube is doing something that amuses and entertains me, and if people happen to stumble across it and find it entertaining or informative, so much the better. Same as what I do with my writing, really; I have no great designs on being "famous" or anything, but it is nice when someone happens across your work and is able to take something worthwhile away from it.

Enough of that, though. Here are some videos about old games on older computers.

The rebooted Atari A to Z series, focusing on Atari 8-bit computers, began with a look at a game I've been meaning to cover for ages: Astro Chase by First Star Software. This is a cool multidirectional shoot 'em up with some flashy graphics and cutscenes. It even made it into arcades… kind of, anyway. It's a great game, but one I've just never gotten around to until now.

Next up is Batty Builders, a game by English Software, a company that was renowned for its high-quality output on Atari 8-bit in the early to mid 1980s. Batty Builders is an intriguing take on the action-puzzle game, and pre-empts pretty much every other "falling block" puzzle game I can think of with its own distinctive twist on the formula. Its balance is questionable, but it's a game I've always been very fond of.

Then we come to Clowns and Balloons, a game by the prolific Frank Cohen, and one of the first games I remember playing on Atari 8-bit. It's a simple game about bouncing a clown on a trampoline to pop a bunch of balloons, but it's well-presented, looks and sounds great for the time, and plays well. This is one I regularly go back to if I'm just playing Atari 8-bit for fun of an evening.

Next we have Desmond's Dungeon, a game I remember hearing the name of a lot, but which I had never looked into. Loosely (very loosely) based on the arcade game Bagman, or at least modern commentators tend to conjecture, it's an arcade-style game with some good presentation, solid mechanics and decent overall gameplay. Perhaps a bit repetitive over the long term, but it at least introduces some intriguing elements to the mix as you progress through its difficulty levels.

Archipelagos is the game that kicked off my new "season" of Atari ST A to Z. This is a game I always thought looked amazing back in the day, but could never picture how it actually played. Turns out it's pretty simple, but thoroughly compelling and very atmospheric. This is one I intend to spend some more time with by myself now I've made the video.

Eastern Front (1941) is a wargame designed to be deep and complex, but also accessible and easy to control. Sure enough, it is very straightforward to get started in, but the intricacies of play could keep one busy for a very long time indeed. Suffice to say as a wargame newbie and strategic idiot, I barely scratch the surface of its possibilities in this video, but it should be enough for those interested to "get" what it is going for. Noteworthy for being the creation of the immensely talented and very clever Chris Crawford, who produced some of the most interesting, deep, inventive games on the Atari 8-bit.

We return to a classic Atari series with Blasteroids, the third entry in the Asteroids series, released during the "Atari Games" era. The Atari ST port of this game is pretty solid, though Atari Games pulling a lot of its usual bullshit — tutorial messages, constantly draining health, harsh difficulty spikes — does mean it puts up a bit of a fight. I have always been rather fond of this game, though, and it was nice to revisit it.

Finally, for now, we have Firefleet, a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up by the same guy who gave us Batty Builders. It's riffing on the Caverns of Mars formula, but has plenty of its own things that make it appealing and interesting. Caverns of Mars is, overall, the better game, for myriad reasons, but this is certainly an interesting title that those who have the patience to deal with its difficulty wall seem to really like.

And that's that for now. I have another Atari ST video in the pipe ready to go out later this week, then at the weekend I'll likely be making some more videos. I'm settling into a good rhythm of doing these, now, so hopefully these will be reasonably regular. I hope you enjoy them, whether you're a newcomer to my channel or you've been stopping by for ages. And if you've never experienced the games of the Atari 8-bit and ST computers, well, I have a huge library of both for you to take a look at on the channel!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 871: How Colleen got her groove back appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Of course, that means getting out of the usual routine, and as such I am writing this post (as I did the last one) on my phone, which I don't like doing because the Jetpack app for posting on WordPress is a bit crap, and also with every passing year, I come to loathe typing on a mobile keyboard with autocorrect just a little bit more. But I can probably suck it up for a night.

It's been a nice, quiet, relaxing weekend as it always tends to be when we come here. My parents keep themselves busy, but they're also — there's no polite way to say this — growing older, and as such seem quite happy to have a couple of days where just not very much happens. Honestly, I'm fine with that too; not that a lot goes on with our daily life when we're back home, but things are especially laid back when we come here.

I spent today playing Thank Goodness You're Here, a game which I've watched Andie play and have also seen Game Grumps play, but which is still a delight to experience. I also made a start on replaying The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, as I thought my Mum, a lapsed adventure game fan, might find it intriguing.

I also spent a little time playing some Doom on Evercade Nexus, because we worked hard on both the console and the game, and it's nice to finally be able to see the finished project, enjoy it and think "we did good". Because we did! We still have lots of work ahead of us for coming releases (and some additions to both Doom and Banjo-Kazooie, our big releases for this year) but the hardest slog we've had to date has, it seems, paid off, thankfully!

Anyway, it is late and I want to sleep, so regardless of the unknown word count, I'm going to leave that there. Business as usual will resume tomorrow!

The post #oneaday Day 869: Mittenacht appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Given that "handhelds" these days are just as capable as TV-connected consoles, it's easy to forget that they were once quite a distinct breed. That's not to put them down or anything; there are plenty of games for even early-ish handhelds like the Game Boy that you can sink hours into. But there was, at one point, a marked distinction in both the technical capabilities of handhelds compared to their TV-connected big brothers, and the way in which games were designed for handhelds versus TV-connected consoles and desktop computers.

You've probably heard someone — perhaps even me! — say that something makes "a good handheld game", but what does that mean? The specifics have changed over the years, but one thing has remained fairly constant: the best handheld games are things that you can boot up quickly, play for a few minutes to either pass the time or as something to do with your hands while you do something else, then set aside without feeling any sort of "obligation" to keep investing large amounts of time into it.

This could mean any number of things. This could mean simple arcade-style score-attack games. This could mean platformers with short, snappy levels like the Super Mario Land series. This could mean shoot 'em ups. Or, indeed, it could mean board and card game adaptations.

Back when Game Boy was current, I suspect a lot of people would have looked upon something like Solitaire FunPak for Game Boy as not worth bothering with; spending a relatively large amount of money for something you could just do with a pack of cards. But now, with how easy it is to load up a device like the Analogue Pocket or a Chinese emulator handheld with games, these titles show their value: they are good handheld games!

I've actually secretly known this for some time. Not specifically that Solitaire FunPak is a good time, but that simple board and card games make for good handheld entertainment. The game that converted me in this regard was Nintendo's 42 All-Time Classics for Nintendo DS, also known as Clubhouse Games in America, because Americans can't count or something. I don't remember exactly what made me pick this up back in the day, but I do remember being very pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it was when I booted it up and spent some time with it. Plus the built-in Pictochat and single-cartridge multiplayer made it super-easy to play with others.

So in retrospect, I'm not surprised that I'm having a good time with Solitaire FunPak, which is a solid implementation of exactly what it offers in its title: a selection of solitaire card games, which you can play either individually or as a "tournament" in an attempt to attain the highest score possible. Even if you just play Klondike, there's plenty of value to be had here, but you have a bunch of other fun games to play, too, and they all work well with both the simplistic visual presentation afforded by the Game Boy's limited capabilities, and the likewise straightforward controls.

This is exactly what "a good handheld game" is — and, being on a device that isn't connected to the Internet, and whose games are completely self-contained affairs that don't need updates, you can just relax with it without the possibility of distractions. And it's so nice to play something that is designed as a simple pastime, and which hasn't been monetised out the wazoo or engineered to manipulate your "engagement" into playing for longer, thereby getting you to look at more ads.

Would I have bought Solitaire FunPak back in the day when I had a Game Boy? Probably not, although if I had I suspect I would have actually had a decent amount of fun with it. Am I having fun with it now, though? Most definitely. And I think I might just go play a game or two while I run myself a bath this evening…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 866: In the palm of your hand appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Said disclaimer is usually some form of admission that "I know this is cheesy, but…" or "yes, this might be cringe, but…" before going on to give a genuine emotional response. For some people, it is seemingly difficult to just give that emotional response without feeling the need to justify it or explain it away.

Well, I'd like to say: own it! If you got hit in the feelings by something, that's okay! If you had an emotional reaction to something that was so strong it reduced you to a sobbing wreck, that's fine! That's good! You have a healthy relationship with your own emotions, and you are not afraid to express them!

I say this as someone who listened to this track from Ace Combat 8 earlier (which I knew the full narrative context of, having beaten the game a couple of days ago) and burst into full-on sobbing at it by the midpoint. Like, I was legitimately crying so hard I had to stop everything else I was doing.

If your immediate response to that is "wow, that's cheesy" or "I can't believe you admitted that", stop. Take a minute. Ponder why you are thinking that. Are you concerned about what other people might think of you if you exhibit some sort of vulnerability? Because that's not something you need to concern yourself with — particularly if you are sitting by yourself.

It's okay to have an emotional response to something. It's okay to have a physiological reaction to that emotional response. You aren't faulty. You aren't broken. You are being human — something it can sometimes feel like we are, in may ways, being discouraged from by the daily algorithmic bombardment from social media.

Sometimes those emotional responses can come from the strangest places — like the funny plane game.

Or perhaps a song developed by a father, based on the near-gibberish his young daughter writes as "stories":

My immediate response to this was just "aw, that's cute and adorable… and surprisingly well-produced for what is essentially a silly joke video". I won't lie, I listened to it multiple times in succession for its pure catchiness.

Then I read the comments to the "Living Room version" of the song (actually just the song with an animation rather than the vertical video of the chap singing). And the emotions hit me, hard.

Y'see, if you haven't listened to the song, the end part features the repeated motif that "everything all fell down, but he picked it up". In the context of the original story and lyrics, it's a silly moment; the main character, the "Little Tall Prince", dropped a cup in the grocery store which caused everything to fall over, so, being a good little prince, he picked it up. Simple, silly, right?

Except human beings have the tendency to ascribe meaning to things where it might not have been the original intent, but it most certainly fits. That video has comment after comment of people expressing the sincere hope that "we can pick it up" — that we can fix the world after "everything all fell down" over the course of the last few years or so.

The world is broken. Peoples' souls are broken. And they want nothing more than to begin the healing process. Little moments like this song give just a glimpse of a world we once knew; one where we could have hope for the future and not find ourselves continually enraged and saddened by the latest stupid, wasteful, obnoxious, tragic, violent, unjust things happening on a daily basis. Hope for the future, through the eyes of a child.

I saw the number of people expressing this sincere hope, completely earnestly, and it hit me right in the heart. I'm not too proud to admit that I shed a few more tears there. And listened to the song a good few more times.

I want to believe that we can pick it up. I want to believe that we can come together in a Song of Wings as one. It is not cringe, embarrassing or cheesy to think such things. Take a moment and have a good cry over something today. I can't guarantee you will necessarily feel better, but you will almost certainly feel some relief at having let out emotions that have probably been pent up within you for a long time.

That's what I felt after putting my own emotions through the wringer over the last couple of days. Sometimes self-care is just about allowing yourself to feel.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 865: Earnestness is neither cringe nor cheesy appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

First up, my Analogue Pocket arrived today. Did I need another retro gaming handheld, particularly one that is quite pricy (and extremely pricy when you add the extortionate shipping and customs charges that come with getting one shipped to the UK)? No, of course I didn't. Did I get one anyway? Yes, of course I did. I have been interested in the Analogue Pocket ever since it was first announced and immediately sold out, so I have always been keeping an eye out for them becoming available again. As it happens, they became available again and I was in a position to be able to buy one without guilt, so that's exactly what I did.

I don't have a lot to report on it so far as I've only really set it up and given it a quick try with a few games so far. I am impressed from the little I've seen, though; the extremely, extremely high resolution screen means that it's capable of doing some wonderful display effects to recreate things like the original Game Boy's dot matrix display and the distinct "line" patterns on things like the Lynx and Game Gear displays. It can also do a nice Trinitron CRT simulation, as well as a number of other "generic" effects — or you can mix things up a bit, like applying a simulation of the DMG Game Boy screen onto something that would not have used that!

I'll doubtless have a lot more to say about it in the near future, but suffice to say for now that this thing seems to be built like a tank in handheld terms, and setting it up to use the MiSTer-style openFPGA cores using an application called PocketSync was quick and easy. PocketSync also takes care of things like downloading BIOS files, so it really is just a few clicks to get the thing set up to load any ROM you'd care to name on one of the supported platforms. It's nice to have the option for original cartridges, though, which was the Analogue Pocket's original unique selling point.

Anyway, that's the Pocket. Like I say, I'll do a more detailed writeup about it in the near future, as it's worth exploring in depth, I think. I'm particularly intrigued to try the nanoloop music creation software that comes built-in. It seems fiddly at first glance, but I'm sure once you get your head around the various button controls and know what everything does, it will become much more usable.

What else has happened today? I tried some American flavours of sugar-free Monster that one of our local convenience stores (the one we call "Funny Shop" to distinguish it from the nearby Tesco Express, and in homage to the fact that it sells unusual imported food products from around the world as well as domestic products) and they were both actually very nice. I tried the "Ultra Red White and Blue Razz" one, which is obnoxiously "patriotic", but, as the name suggests, just tastes of blue raspberry, while the Ultra Sunrise flavour might, in fact, be my all-time favourite Monster; it tastes like actual oranges. Not like orange soda flavour, like an actual orange. Highly recommended. I hope we see it more "officially" over here at some point; in the meantime, I will be counting on Funny Shop to keep me stocked.

I also tried the Taco variant of Buldak noodles. I have mixed feelings on this. It had a pleasant Mexican-esque smell once the powder and sauce went in, but in terms of flavour it was mostly overwhelmed by the Buldak hot sauce. The "flakes" pouch also contained some of the most unidentified foodstuffs I think I've ever seen. There was something that I assume was supposed to be a bit like taco meat, but I have no idea what it actually was, and it didn't really taste of anything. I am yet to find a Buldak variant that beats the regrettably discontinued Curry flavour, though the sweet fried chicken one is pretty good (yes, that means it is a sweet fried chicken flavour hot chicken flavour noodle) but seemingly getting a bit harder to find. I also tried the Rosé one the other day and had trouble distinguishing it from the Carbonara variant. It was nice, to be sure, and I'll probably seek it out again, but I'm not sure how it distinguishes itself from Carbonara.

Well, that's my day. I think a bit more handheld play is in my immediate future…

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The post #oneaday Day 864: Grab bag appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Anyway, I went into the Street Fighter movie expecting something that was dumb but fun, and that's exactly what I got. Even as someone who is not particularly "into" Street Fighter, there was plenty of series fanservice in there. Rather wisely, the movie is set in the early 1990s, so the vast bulk of the cast consists of the most familiar faces from the series' early days — in other words, the cast of Street Fighter II, and a couple of additions from Super Street Fighter II (Cammy, Akuma) and Alpha (Dan). There's also an incredibly deep cut in the form of Joe, who only ever appeared as a non-playable enemy character in the first Street Fighter game.

The story, as you might expect for a Street Fighter movie, primarily concerns Ryu and Ken, who are given some extensive backstory, presented using extremely stylish anime-style sequences. Ryu beat Sagat in the first World Warrior tournament (as depicted in the original Street Fighter), but in doing so came perilously close to giving in to the Dark Hado and becoming Evil Ryu. His desire not to fall to evil resulted in him being unable to fully unleash a Hadouken when Gouken, sensei to him and Ken, was under attack by Akuma. This drove a wedge between Ryu and Ken, leaving Ryu to go into hiding, believing that he should leave fighting behind, and Ken to become a self-styled "sports entertainment" celebrity, hoovering up brand deals with the assistance of his manager, Dan.

I don't know Street Fighter lore extensively, but I got the impression that the movie plays a little fast and loose with the characters' backgrounds. As someone who doesn't particularly care about Street Fighter lore, I also don't care about this. In the context of the movie, their backgrounds and motivations for getting involved in the ongoing plot made sense — inasmuch as anything in this gleefully chaotic movie makes sense, anyway.

I won't summarise the entire plot here, but suffice to say that it involves M. Bison being Up To No Good, Akuma putting in an appearance, Chun-Li double-crossing the villains in her role as an Interpol agent, Cammy in her pre-having-broken-free-from-Bison phase and lots of people thumping one another.

Not all of the core cast of Street Fighter II are directly involved in the Big Plot, but they all get at least one fight scene. E. Honda, for example, only shows up for a fight with Ryu in a sauna so the latter can take the former's place in the tournament that forms the centrepiece to the plot — but it's a pretty great fight, with Honda using both his Hundred-Hand Slap and Flying Headbutt manoeuvre. (Unrelated fact: one of my friends once thought that he was saying "guffcake" when performing this move in the original Street Fighter II, and now I cannot know that move as anything other than "guffcake". I had to look up its actual name.)

Zangief is probably the most under-used of the core cast, with his role primarily consisting of getting angry that Ken ruined his steak dinner. He still performs a good few crowd-pleaser moves, though.

What I enjoyed most about the movie is that it's funny. Not in a "funny because it's so bad" sort of way, but in the sense that it's funny because it knows how silly and camp it all is, and absolutely leans hard into it. Bison even gets a "…for me, it was Tuesday" line in homage to the 1994 Street Fighter movie.

Ken is a particular highlight throughout, because he's a dickhead. Various entries in the series have both downplayed and emphasised this aspect of the character, and he's a real dickhead here, but not so irredeemably awful or unlikeable that he has no chance of redemption. On the contrary, he's mostly a dickhead because he's an idiot, and that makes for plenty of endearing comedy, particularly when paired up with Dan, who doesn't do a lot of fighting but has some amusing lines. There are some especially amusing scenes when Ken, Dan and Guile all try out out-masculine each other — with Dan, of course, coming off the worst.

In series tradition, the actual "tournament" isn't really an important plot point at all, as the main thrust of the story is Bison Being Up To No Good and what everyone else is doing about that. David Dastmalchian is a wonderful Bison, striking the perfect balance of sinister and absurd, and he frequently steals the show in the scenes where he appears. It's a bit of a shame he doesn't really get a good kicking — the ending is very clearly attempting to set up a sequel — but given the amount of other spectacular clashes throughout the movie (and the fact Bison does get a "behold my true power" moment when squaring off against Chun-Li), I can't really be too mad.

So yeah. I really enjoyed it. Not only did it do a good job of capturing the "vibe" of Street Fighter, but it was also an enjoyable, compelling movie. I like it better than Resident Evil; I didn't dislike Resident Evil, as I wrote the other day, but it did feel more like a series of entertaining vignettes rather than a coherent movie. Street Fighter, meanwhile, felt like it went places. They were often absurd, ridiculous places, yes, but one should expect nothing less from the series. It has, after all, always been extremely silly — no matter how seriously some people like to take playing the games, the series will always be the one with the stretchy-armed Indian, the green-skinned monstrous Brazilian, the American military man with the implausible hair and too many other examples of delightfully delirious nonsense to list in full here.

I feel you have to be a special kind of miserable to come out of that movie not having had a good time. No, it's not great art, it's not thought-provoking, it won't make you think about the human condition or any number of other philosophical concepts. It's a movie about people punching each other. And it's a good movie about people punching each other. If you go into it expecting anything else, that might be a you problem. And that's my final word!

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The post #oneaday Day 861: Round. One! FILM! appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I've definitely made the right decision to refocus my YouTube effort back on what I was having the most fun with in the first place. I am never going to "make it big" on YouTube and I have no intention of making it into a second job in an attempt to do so; I already keep more than busy enough for the day job, and I want YouTube to be fun. But I also want it to reflect the things that are important to me — hence the refocus on Atari stuff.

I think part of the reason I pressed pause on the A to Z series a while back was because I was worried I was going to start running out of things to cover. But going through the spreadsheet of reviews I put together a while back, it's clear that isn't going to happen for a long time, on either Atari 8-bit or Atari ST. There may be some individual letters that are a little short on things to cover — as I recall, I was running out of games that began with "Y" on ST, unless I wanted to cover various iterations on Yahtzee over and over again! — but I can just skip those if necessary. Or, indeed, I can play a multitude of Yahtzees, since I'm sure at least some of them do something vaguely interesting with the concept!

Anyway, as a preview of what's to come, I will be covering Desmond's Dungeon, Eastern Front (1941) and Firefleet on Atari 8-bit, and Archipelagos, Blasteroids and Cards on Atari ST. Most of these are new to me, which is exciting; I'd played Eastern Front and Blasteroids before, but I was a bit young to understand Eastern Front when I was a kid, so it's been interesting to return to that now I know what a wargame is. I'm not convinced I know how to play effectively, but it was fun giving it a go, regardless.

I think the biggest pleasant surprise of the day for me was Archipelagos. I remember seeing this back when it originally released and thinking it looked thoroughly interesting, and it really, really is. The version I was playing had a strange bug where every fifth level kills you instantly, but since you can just skip levels at will — and there are 9,999 of them — you shouldn't feel too bad about just skipping those ones that don't work. The version I was playing was the hard disk converted version by Pera Putnik, so it's entirely possible that the conversion process just made something go a bit skew-whiff somewhere; I haven't yet tried a disk-only version of it. Either way, it's a thoroughly interesting game, and you'll get to see exactly why quite soon!

So yeah. It's been a good day. Okay, I didn't get up until noon because I was having strange dreams and they put me in a bit of a funk at the start of the day, but I began my day with the intention of making some videos, and by jingo I've gone and done it: recorded, edited and exported, all in a day. Not bad, eh?

Now I think I've earned an hour or two of Ace Combat to celebrate. And maybe some ice cream.

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The post #oneaday Day 856: Flurry of activity appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Sadly, it is increasingly looking as if the retro sphere, much like everyfuckingthing else, has been infiltrated, corrupted, poisoned and rotted by the scourge that is generative AI.

In just the last week, I have seen myriad vibe-coded "recompilation" projects, slop peddlers attempting to submit 50k lines of changes to an FPGA core that was already working just fine, the Oliver Twins making it abundantly clear what their odious stance is, web-based editors for the ZX Spectrum games Chaos and Target: Renegade slapped together using AI coding tools and someone making the bold claim that they have been "working on" (i.e. they prompted Claude to do it for them) multiplayer conversions of a variety of classic games for home computers and consoles, including Wizard of Wor, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros. and Metroid. Oh, and someone who claimed to have decompiled Adobe's entire Creative Cloud suite of software and made a "clean room" version of it that doesn't work, like, at all, but that's not exactly retro. Still relevant, though.

The irritating thing is that a lot of these projects sound like they could be potentially interesting! 4-player Pac-Man on Atari 8-bit is a cool idea! Simultaneous co-op in Super Mario Bros. and Metroid are potentially intriguing twists on classic games! Tweaking retro games to play in different ways has been a proud tradition ever since everyone learned what the POKE command does!

And yet, I cannot, will not support any of these projects in good conscience. I just cannot. I cannot bring myself to give any sort of "reward" — and attention is a form of reward — to someone who thinks that throwing something into Claude Code and getting it to spit out something that looks convincing at first glance (but is probably deeply, deeply broken under the hood) is "working on something". I do not care that it looks impressive, at first glance, that you can click a button and some sort of functional-seeming, executable code pops out of the other end.

Because, really, what is the point? These projects are not put out into the wild with any attempt of aiding our collective understanding of things; they are put out in an attempt to accumulate clout, pure and simple. People want to be the first to do something, or the only person to do something, and the assumption, today, appears to be that the best way to do this is "just get AI to do it". Except then you haven't done anything yourself, have you? You have used a technology based on the stolen creativity and expertise of humanity, which consumes vast amounts of energy and water, which is unsustainably expensive to maintain beyond the next couple of years at most, which often gets things flat-out wrong, and which is responsible for making the Internet seven hundred thousand orders of magnitude worse than it has ever been, and you have got it to churn out something that, if you had to debug it yourself, you almost certainly wouldn't know where to start.

The standard counterargument to all this is "well, if this person hadn't done their little Claude Code project, it wouldn't have happened at all". And that, to me, is not a convincing case. It's a waste of time and money (but not effort) to produce something that, at first glance, appears to be "good enough" rather than something which has actually been crafted to work properly and perfectly — and in the meantime, it discourages people who are still doing this sort of thing properly to continue with their own projects, because that whole part of the scene has now been tainted with Claudeslop, and we've already seen with a variety of projects how disheartening that can be for some.

I think my biggest concern with all this is the long-term brain drain effect it will have. We're already seeing frightening numbers of people completely surrendering to the AI's "judgement" (which isn't a thing, but they believe it is) rather than thinking for themselves. And the end result, the longer all this goes on, is that actual skills and knowledge will atrophy. As the people who did this "the hard way" back in the day start to pass on — and many of them are passing on at this point, sadly — there will not be a generation of people who can take over. And when all this AI nonsense eventually collapses — which it will, as there is no way the world's economy can keep up this absolute insanity forever — it's going to leave a lot of people, projects and AI-corrupted enthusiast scenes in a real mess.

Now, you might think that doesn't matter for 40+ year old 8-bit home computers, but it absolutely does. Understanding how things work and how to recreate the conditions from back in the day is a crucial part of preserving the history of the medium, and the second you prompt Claude to just do it for you, you are wilfully saying that doesn't matter; you are wilfully disrespecting people who still know how to do all this stuff the old-fashioned way.

It matters. Your personal clout, on the other hand, does not, particularly if said clout has been accumulated by not really doing anything.

Maybe I should learn 6502 assembler just to spite these people.

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The post #oneaday Day 852: Rotting retro appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The Oliver Twins are the textbook examples of "bedroom programmers" from the classic British home computer scene. They made games at home using their own skills and creativity, and achieved quite deserved success with many of them. Yes, I know a lot of people denigrate the Dizzy series in particular these days — particularly people from North America — but the fact is, these games had a place, and they achieved what they set out to do: provide a fun, distinctive mascot character, and a varied selection of games in which he appeared.

As such, I've always had respect for them and what they achieved. They helped define the British home computer scene of the 1980s, which, as you know, is a sector of gaming that is of enormous personal interest and relevance to me — even if I only had a chance to come to their stuff once we were into the Atari ST era, since they didn't make anything for the Atari 8-bit. I have genuinely fond memories of playing their stuff from back then, even if some of it doesn't hold up brilliantly (hello, Panic Dizzy on ST) and I had a lot of fun discovering a variety of their games I'd never played with The Oliver Twins Collection from the first year of Evercade, prior to me joining the company.

But with their current stance on AI, they have absolutely lost the fucking plot and seem to be wilfully ignorant of the overall mood in the room.

Let's go through some of the things they said in response to the questions from John Szczepaniak of Time Extension, shall we?

"We believe that, as creatives, it is another creative tool."

Literally the first answer is parroting the inevitable, probably LLM-generated in the first place, copypasta about it being "just a tool". Try harder.

"…in the right hands, we can create some awesome stuff that would have been impossible to create any other way."

Bollocks. Citation fucking needed. How, exactly, would it have been "impossible" to churn out things any other way than using generative AI?

"I'm sorry, but as an experiment, to create Emerald City, and all the art that went into this, it would have been an over-a-year project with a couple of artists, probably a hundred thousand pounds, all said and done when you're looking at all the costs."

Motherfucker, you literally ran a Kickstarter to fund your AI slop project. Ask for that £100,000 then pay some fucking artists with it! The reason your £5,000 Kickstarter failed is not because it was a fundamentally bad project, but because the project page, all the promotional material and literally everything about the project was drenched in generative AI imagery. This meant that people, on the whole, did not want to fund it. Because what is the point in paying for something the creators clearly have so little respect for themselves? Why would anyone want to fund your token habit?

If you had been honest and open about needing money, time and specialists to pull something off, I'm pretty sure a name as well-known and once-respected as the Oliver Twins would have been able to run a successful £100,000 Kickstarter without a problem. And whining and complaining that a project would take over a year, oh boo-fucking-hoo, creative projects require work over a significant period of time? Who would have fucking thought it?

"Now, as for scraping IP and all of that kind of stuff, I believe there should be regulations about what AI is trained on. I, unfortunately, do not run OpenAI or any of these other big gigs. As humble little guys just making Dizzy games, we can't control that. We could completely ignore a very powerful creative tool and then decide to produce nothing because it's too difficult to produce the quality that we want. And so we could go quietly into our retirement, or we can go, this is exciting! We love tech. We are sci-fi guys. This is an incredible time to be alive for a creator."

I can't believe they actually said the "humble little guys" thing out loud. We're just humble little guys who deserve some crumbs of stolen creative material. Have some fucking principles. You may not run OpenAI, Anthropic or any of the other shits destroying everything nice at the moment, but you can have the principles to not engage with the product that everyone hates and which is making everything worse. You can read the room and understand that people fucking hate this, and they hate shit that looks like your Emerald City garbage, but for the most part people are too polite to say that to your face or within potential earshot of you.

All it sounds like is that you wanted to be able to churn out something quickly, cheaply and with minimal effort, which does not sound like being a "creator". It sounds like two old men trying desperately to jump on a trend and cynically produce a product — worse, content — with no lasting value, and a morally bankrupt attitude towards the way it is produced.

Fuck the Oliver Twins, and fuck their stinking attitude. I once respected them as creators — and still do respect the work they both did when they were younger. But the men they are now, and the slop they are apparently desperate to produce as quickly and cheaply as possible? Completely and utterly dead to me.

Cunts.

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The post #oneaday Day 850: Fuck the Oliver Twins appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm interested in this perception that no-one finishes games any more, because it's one of those things that is an alien concept to me — particularly with story-based games. Can you really derive any sort of satisfaction from playing a narrative-focused game and just leaving it unresolved? I guess in some ways it's the same as watching part of a TV series and then dropping it partway through. But it's still kind of alien to me.

So I thought what I'd do today is go through some games I can think of off the top of my head that one might regard as "popular", then see what the Steam Achievement rate is for "finished the game" or equivalent achievements. I appreciate this is an imperfect metric, because it doesn't take into account other platforms (particularly those which don't have achievements, like Switch) but it'll do for a rough idea. All right, let's take a look.

Pragmata

42.3% of people who played Capcom's Pragmata on Steam finished it to the point of seeing the credits roll on a first playthrough. This is a reasonably respectable number so far as I'm concerned, and I'm unsurprised to see this so relatively high to kick us off. Pragmata was praised as one of the first genuinely excellent triple-A games for quite a long time, so it's encouraging to see this many people play it through to completion.

It is less than half of the people who started it, though.

We see a big drop-off when it comes to completing optional material, though. 13.4% completed the main objective in all the Training Simulator side activities, which I completely empathise with; the Training Simulator is by far the worst part of the game and I absolutely hated every second of it. I am, therefore, unsurprised that a similar number of people went through and completed the postgame scenario, "Unknown Signal", since that involves running through a series of Training Simulator-like missions — only without the annoying bits. However, if you weren't to know about the "without the annoying bits" part, I can completely understand you not wanting to bother with it. And the additional bit you get on the ending for completing Unknown Signal is absolutely not worth it, either.

Resident Evil Requiem

Would you look at that? Nearly 75% of people have beaten Resident Evil Requiem, one of the most well-regarded entries in the series for quite some time. Only 65% of them beat it on "Standard (Modern)" difficulty, though, suggesting that all the Difficulty Level Discourse we've been having for the last few years has had an effect; there's a small but statistically significant number of people who had no qualms about playing on the lowest difficulty level.

Interestingly there is a different percentage for "complete the game on at least Casual difficulty" and "complete the game" ("Hope and Requiem"). I wonder how that happened?

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

We look at a longer game now with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Here, just under 40% of people actually finished the game. I can sort of understand it in this case, because although Expedition 33's main narrative is thoroughly compelling and emotionally engaging, the gameplay is challenging enough that I can see a significant number of people falling off before the end. It's one of those instances where although the developers made a huge, beautiful world and obviously want as many people as possible to see it, they also weren't willing to compromise on the mechanical intricacies of the game. Respect to them for that, but it does mean that significantly less than half of the players who started the game finished it.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Pity poor Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, though, a game where only just over a quarter of people who started it played it through to completion. This is another one that is arguably understandable due to the vast size of the game, but the team behind the game have got to be looking at that figure and feeling a bit disheartened.

But at least it's not the original Final Fantasy VII, which only 8.7% people who played it on Steam have finished. It's a shorter game! But there's also the fact that a lot of the people who would be inclined to buy Final Fantasy VII on Steam have nostalgia for having played it on PlayStation back in the '90s, and as such they may have just fired it up for a session or two to indulge that nostalgia, then set it aside. Less than 10% kind of sucks, though, because I'm sure there's some people coming to it for the first time, starting it and then never seeing it through to its magnificent conclusion.

Blue Prince

Honestly I'm surprised that nearly 40% of people finished Blue Prince, because it's the kind of game that repels you hard if you're not into it. But then you might say that the sort of people inclined to pick up Blue Prince probably already know that it's a game they'll like, and thus there should be a respectable proportion of them who finish it.

I didn't stick with Blue Prince long enough to know if this trophy encompasses all the endgame bullshit you have to do other than playing the annoying house layout game, but either way, even getting as far as just finishing the annoying house layout game is worthy of respect so far as I'm concerned.

Fuckin' hate that game.

I think that'll do for now. I know that's probably far from a representative or statistically significant sample, but on the whole, it seems like, on average, less than half of the people who start a game on Steam finish it. The games that are more likely to get finishes are ones that are on the shorter side, like Resident Evil, while longer RPGs inevitably see a much more significant drop-off. More niche-interest titles likely enjoy a slightly higher completion percentage due to the people playing having a sort of "vested interest" in the game and the genre it occupies, but still.

Anyway, I'm not sure I have a point here. So long as games that you can complete continue to exist, I will continue completing them, one at a time, because that's how I enjoy playing. If you're someone who doesn't beat games, do make an effort to finish one or two. I can pretty much guarantee you'll find it to be a satisfying experience. Just be warned: once you start in earnest, you'll want to beat everything you play… and for some, that way lies madness!

At least you're not chasing platinum trophies. That really is a sure-fire way to ruin all enjoyment of video games.

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The post #oneaday Day 849: Do people really not finish games? appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Silent Hill Townfall is quite a different sort of game, though. For starters, it's presented from a first-person perspective rather than Silent Hill f's third-person viewpoint, and it places a strong emphasis on stealth rather than combat. There is combat — and it's modern-day, weighty, get-hit-once-and-half-your-health-bar-is-gone combat — but for the most part, sneaking around pretty much always seems to be an option, and in some cases is outright essential. I am fine with this.

I know some people don't like stealth much, but when it's executed well, it can be a great part of a game — and it's especially fitting with the horror genre. It makes absolute thematic sense to be creeping around monsters who very much do not have your best interests at heart rather than attacking them, and it especially fits with Silent Hill's traditional idea of a relatively "normal" person being the protagonist.

Silent Hill Townfall also provides you with some excellent tools to help with the stealth part. The main one is a little portable CRT television which you can "tune in" to monsters' frequencies, and this allows you to "see" them, even through walls. At other times, you have a pager whose LCD display shows the direction that monsters are in, but not details. Most of the monsters move in clear patterns, so the stealth sequences tend to boil down to puzzles of sorts: how best to get across the area while avoiding ending up in their line of sight.

There's excellent use of sound, too. When you're visible and vulnerable to a monster, the background audio builds in a gradual crescendo before eventually giving a "boom" when they're actively pursuing you. Likewise, you can tell when you've reached safety, because the background audio chills out a bit. Very clever and subtle.

I'm not entirely sure what's going on in the narrative as yet, but that's par for the course with the series. There is a lot of… medical stuff going on, though. Medical stuff in general gives me the squick, so it's ideal horror fodder for me; when combined with some of the other stuff Silent Hill Townfall is doing, I'm very happy at the experience it has provided thus far.

Highlights for me in the seven or eight hours I've apparently played since yesterday include some puzzles that involve creatively interpreting video footage to determine a combination number subtly hidden within; an inordinately stressful sequence in which you are tasked with performing various medical procedures on a patient while a complete cunt of a doctor yells at you over an intercom for being incompetent; and a puzzle based around locating blood bags, pairing them up with the appropriate medical charts, and then combining them to crack a code that unlocks a door.

I'm not crazy about the "instant death" monster who showed up during the blood bag sequence (only during the hunting for the blood bags, not during the puzzly part, thankfully) but, as previously noted, the sneaky-sneaky nature of most of the game means that you're already well-trained at avoiding monsters by the time you run into it anyway.

I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes. There's already been some intriguing weirdness to it all, but I have no idea where it's going to end up just yet. We shall see, I guess — that is, if Ace Combat 8 doesn't distract me from it too much…

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The post #oneaday Day 848: Initial impressions from St. Amelia appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Me, I've always been a "why not both?" kind of person. There are times when I'm in the mood for a game to tell me a good story, times when I'm in the mood to engage with some interesting mechanics — and times when I find a blend of the two to be most rewarding.

Actually, there are times where I feel like I'm enjoying mechanics-centric games a lot more now than I have done in the past — to such a degree that I've found myself wondering more than once if I actually prefer them. This was particularly fresh in my mind while I was feasting on Super Mario Galaxy while we were on holiday.

Then a game like Nighthawks comes along, and I'm reminded of how involving and immersive a game that places its narrative front and centre can really be. How it can feel like you're really inhabiting a world with a cast of characters, truly sharing your experiences with them.

The gameplay in Nighthawks isn't especially complex, but it is enough to distinguish itself from both visual novels and adventure games. I'll have a lot more to say about this when I write about the game in full once I've beaten it. I'm not sure how far off that is now, but I've been playing for 30 hours and things are definitely building to something. But suffice it to say for now that I am thoroughly enraptured by this dark little world and the colourful cast of misfits that populate it.

I think the simple answer is that I just like a wide variety of gaming experiences, both mechanics- and narrative-centric. I attribute this to growing up in an age where mechanics-centric was the norm and narrative-centric was relatively unusual to see, and then having several of my defining gaming experiences be with narrative-centric games, including Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Final Fantasy VII. This state of affairs helped me see the benefit of all types of games.

Well, no. There are some games, like grand strategy affairs, that I still find largely indecipherable. But I guess one has to draw a line somewhere. As it stands, I don't think I'm ever going to be short of things to play!

For all the terrible things happening in the games industry, it is still a great time to be into games. And there are a bunch of things out in the imminent future that I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck into. After Nighthawks, of course…

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The post #oneaday Day 844: Mechannative appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I actually don't know very much about Silent Hill Townfall. I don't even really know how it plays. After not loving how Silent Hill f turned out — or more accurately, how it played — I haven't really been following the new one, but I have seen a few screenshots floating across my feed here and there. And I am finding myself oddly excited by them: specifically, by the fact that the game unfolds in a lovingly recreated depiction of working-class Britain (well, Scotland, but much of the characteristic visual identity is similar) and allows you to… well, poke around in tiny, convincingly rendered houses in extreme levels of detail.

I'm all for this. The idea of Silent Hill being more of an amorphous concept than an actual, physical place is a solid move for the series, I think; for all my grumbling at Silent Hill f's gameplay, its vibes and depiction of 1960s rural Japan was fantastic. The way the setting reflects the protagonist's mental state has always been an important part of the series, and setting it in places other than small-town America allows a lot more scope for this aspect of the storytelling.

I'm not even all that bothered about the inevitable "Otherworld" stuff that will almost certainly be part of Townfall. I don't need spooky scary monsters jumping out of closets at me. I just want a cool little world to wander around.

My attitude towards this sort of interactive experience goes some distance to explaining why, back on its original release, I enjoyed Gone Home so much. There are still people who get absolutely frothing mad about that game, but I was never one of them. For me, it perfectly captured the almost exact same feelings that I felt when I first returned to the place that had once been my home after my first wife left me. You might think that's not exactly something I'd care to be reminded of, but at the point I played Gone Home there was enough distance between that happening and me being able to look back on it and appreciate a piece of work that understood those feelings.

A similar thing for Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, a mostly forgotten PS4 game in which you walk very slowly through an English village and weird things happen with no real explanation or resolution. While I very much understand some people bouncing off that one in particular, I was thoroughly enamoured with just existing in that world.

I think all this goes back even further to Build engine games like Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior and Blood, which at least made an effort to depict convincing, realistic environments and feature interactive elements you could fiddle around with. Of course, the tech was too limited to be able to create environments with the level of detail we expect from our big-budget entertainment today, but there was something oddly… real-feeling about these virtual locales that I never quite got from games that took a more fantastic or sci-fi approach.

So yeah. I'm mostly excited about Silent Hill Townfall to wander into houses that look a bit like where my Nan used to live. And I don't have a problem with that at all. If the game turns out to be good, so much the better. But I'm going to enjoy just exploring that world, I think.

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The post #oneaday Day 843: Exploring the mundane appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I really enjoyed Ys VIII overall. It still feels a bit odd to play an Ys game that is 50+ hours long, but the game didn't drag at any point. It consistently sends you to new and interesting locales, and the story develops in some thoroughly intriguing directions as you progress. I successfully got the "true" ending, which isn't all that difficult to get (you just need more than 198 reputation points, which are easily acquired through just normal gameplay) and everything wrapped up in a most satisfying manner.

After writing my piece on Ys, I went back to the excellent Nighthawks, which is a spectacularly good game. As you might expect, I will be writing a more substantial piece on this once I've finished it, but suffice to say for now that if you have enjoyed any of the relatively recent crop of what I like to call "storytelling RPGs" (Disco Elysium, Esoteric Ebb), then you will definitely get a kick out of Nighthawks.

I think one of the things that always impresses me the most about a good quality game like this is how it can truly create a sense of a world without having an actual 3D space you can freely wander around. For me, the primarily text-based world of Nighthawks is considerably more compelling than a fully 3D modelled but ultimately bland and personality-free "open world", particularly because of the colourful characters that inhabit that world. It's funny, because this is exactly what the capital-A "Adventure" snobs were talking about in the early days of the medium; if you have a suitably compatible brain, the imagery conjured up by your mind from reading text will always be more vivid than anything even a powerful video card can render. (Of course, the fact that Nighthawks has beautiful art and excellent voice acting also helps a lot.)

Once I've finished Nighthawks, I'm going to play Silent Hill Townfall, which looks like it's going to be thoroughly interesting. I'm oddly excited to play a game with such accurate-looking renditions of a British (well, Scottish) town, and I'm intrigued to see how the game differentiates itself from other Silent Hill games. I didn't love Silent Hill f, although I didn't hate it either; from what I understand, Silent Hill Townfall is quite a different beast anyway, so I'm excited to explore it.

After that, I think it's going to have to be Ace Combat 8. I love Ace Combat, and this new one has been getting excellent reviews. I'm happy about that. The series deserves to do well, and it's nice to have a game like this on modern hardware. I mean, the PS2 Ace Combat games still look surprisingly great, but it's even better to have something in full HD-o-vision.

There we go, all caught up. Now watch me forget to write something later today.

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The post #oneaday Day 842: Quick catch-up appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I also still need to finish Ys VIII, which I set aside while I started Nighthawks, but I think I'm going to devote tomorrow to. I was enjoying it a lot, and I think I'm getting near the end, so I would like to finish it properly. Ys VIII is not a recent release, though. It came out ten years ago and has had two sequels since then, both of which I would like to play at some point.

Not only that, but I've been having a steady stream of stuff I preordered months ago finally coming around — just this week I've had Chained Echoes and Trails in the Sky Second Chapter come in, Little Goody Two-Shoes is on the way and I'm sure there are others to look forward to.

Situations like we've got here are why I'm not immediately worried for the crash that the top end of the industry appears to be careening towards. I have enough unplayed (or "want to replay") games on my shelves to last me for many, many years at this point, so if there comes a day where, for one reason or another, I just can't buy any new games? I think I'm probably going to be fine.

It will be a sad day when it's no longer possible to buy boxed copies of games, of course — and I'm sure once Sony successfully pushes for this with their abandonment of discs in 2027, at the very least Microsoft will follow — but I'm well-stocked in my little bunker for such an eventuality. Only question is: will I actually be able to finish all these RPGs before I die? I reckon I can… assuming the world itself lasts that long, of course.

My wife often takes the piss out of me for the number of games I have that are still shrinkwrapped, but I've always bought stuff with this sort of eventuality in mind. I mean, I was hoping it would never actually come to a day where physical media would no longer be a thing — and I guess it still might not, as much can change even in the space of a year — but I've basically been investing in the future enjoyment of my hobby, and in the meantime, I've been wanting to just support the games that I would like to see more of. As frustrating as it is to know that "Day One" sales count for almost more than anything for a lot of developers and publishers, it is, unfortunately, a fact. And while I'm in a position where I'm comfortable enough to be able to support the stuff I like, I'm happy to do so — even if I don't get around to actually playing the games in question until, at times, a year or two (or ten) later.

Anyway, I'm not buying anything else until payday next week. But I will probably be picking up Silent Hill Townfall and Ace Combat 8. I do genuinely want to beat Ys VIII though! Really! I want to write about it and everything!

For this evening, though, Nighthawks is calling, so if you need me, I'll be stalking in the shadows of Cradlebridge.

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The post #oneaday Day 840: The deluge has started appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I should probably add at this point that I have not yet played the full version of Nighthawks — it is presently sitting on my PC ready to be started for the first time. But I did play a demo several months back (EDIT: nearly a year ago!) that looked like it would be pretty representative of the full experience, and I came away from that demo thinking "cor blimey, that game was a bit of all right and no mistake, onto the wishlist it goes". I have no reason to believe that things have taken a devastatingly shit turn between that time and now, particularly because Nighthawks has been in development for so long.

Eight years, to be exact; the project began its public-facing life on Kickstarter in 2018. I must confess I only became aware of it a little more recently — I think the aforementioned demo was the first time I'd really stumbled across it in any meaningful way — but like I say, that initial contact was enough for me to get thoroughly interested in the project and want to pick it up immediately on release day. Well, release day is here, and I have made good on my promise: I have bought it, and intend to spend the evening playing it, even though I haven't quite yet finished Ys VIII as I hoped I would have by this point. But no matter. I'm sure I can find a way of juggling these two games without agonising over the decision of which to play each evening. I'm good at that.

(beat)

Anyway, some of you may still be wondering what the fuck this Nighthawks thing actually is. Well, it's a vampire RPG, based around a similar concept to White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade franchise, only in this instance there is no Masquerade; the existence of vampires is no longer a secret. Still, the fact that you play a vampire, with all the interesting powers that comes with both your new undeath and your overall background, is a common factor — and with the disappointment that Bloodlines 2 apparently ended up being, there is definitely scope for a good vampire RPG in 2026.

Don't come into this expecting something along the lines of Bloodlines, though; this is primarily a text and dialogue-based game rather than a game where you have a little vampire man that runs around a city, bites people and occasionally indulges in some of the worst first- and/or third-person action ever committed to a gold master. That means it's a very character-centric game, with interactions between your character and the various inhabitants of the city playing a crucial role in how things unfold. To put it another way, its overall approach has a fair amount in common with games like Disco Elysium and Esoteric Ebb, where you are effectively working with the game, which acts as a virtual "game master", to build your story.

The game is written by Richard Cobbett of PC Gamer fame, whose other work actually on games includes titles such as Beyond a Steel Sky and Sunless Sea/Skies. It also features art by Ben Chandler, who has worked on some excellent adventure games in the last few years, and Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games has acted as producer. There are also some excellent voice actors in the game, including, among others, the inimitable Sally Beaumont (of Old Skies fame) in a "minor but memorable" role, apparently.

As I say, I'm yet to jump into the full game and see how things have turned out, as well as establish factors like how long the game is, but the demo version from a while back made me very excited about this game indeed. As such, I'm really looking forward to sinking my fangs into it after dinner, and I'm sure I'll have much more to say about it in the near future.

Right now, though, it's 7.30pm, I've had dinner, I've emptied and reloaded the dishwasher: it's time. The lights are down low. It's time to enter the nocturnal world of Nighthawks. Maybe you should, too.

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The post #oneaday Day 837: Nighthawks! appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm afraid I don't give any credence to the theory that AI development tools "democratise" development of stuff like this. The biggest problem — besides the fact that AI models are all built on stolen data, of course… and the environmental impacts — is, without a doubt, the fact that people using them end up shitting out something that they have absolutely no understanding of. Thus, when a problem arises — and you can bet a problem will arise with something shat out by AI — they have no idea how to fix it.

"Well, just hand it over to someone who knows what they're doing!" you might say. And to that I say, any developer worth their salt will not accept such a project. No-one wants to debug the spaghetti code shat out by a plagiarism robot. Not only will that be a lot of work, much of which wouldn't have needed to happen if the project had been done properly in the first place, but the person fixing the job will end up with their reputation tarnished purely by virtue of having worked on an AI project.

Unfair? Perhaps. But at this point, people have to know that using generative AI is going to attract backlash. People fucking hate it! People would rather not have a thing than have a thing that was pumped out using generative AI tools! And any short-lived kudos you might attain for being the "first" person to do something (except you didn't actually do the thing yourself) will, in short order, absolutely torpedo your reputation. At this point, with all the high-profile cases there have been of backlash against projects that involve generative AI, you would have to be either wilfully ignorant or just outright sticking your fingers in your ears to be unaware of the resistance to all this.

And the thing that sucks is that, for me and numerous others like me, the torrent of vibecoded slop projects has completely destroyed any interest or excitement we might have had for things that should be interesting and exciting. The decomp/recomp scene should be fascinating, and the non-vibecoded examples of these games put out amazing results that can potentially breathe new life into all manner of different games. But I've seen so many announcements that conclude with "…and this was made with Claude" that I'm afraid I just don't give a shit any more. I just do not care. I do not have the time, energy or inclination to sort through everything just to find the few things that have been made with genuine human knowledge and craft. And so I just can't be arsed to keep up with any of this sort of project any more, be they fan translations or decomp/recomp efforts. It's enough of a pain having to resist generative AI bullshit in full-price commercial titles already.

I know pushback against generative AI is repetitive and tedious and annoying, but, frankly, the signs are very much apparent that we haven't been pushing back hard enough. We need to get to a point where even thinking about using generative AI for something like this makes these dorks flush their own heads down the toilet. I'm sick of it. And, if you're reading this, you probably are too.

Still, with any luck the bubble will burst soon, and all of this garbage will go the way of NFTs. I cannot wait. Cannot wait.

Advance notice to any AI boosters already composing an indignant comment: I think I have made my stance on this abundantly clear at this point. If you come in here with any of the usual garbage about "just a tool" and "what about the motor car" or "Amazon Web Services" or "Luddites", you will be banished to the pit of I Never Have To Hear From You Ever Again. You have been warned. Go cry to your precious Claude about it. And it will not care, because it can't. You are going to die alone. And you deserve it.

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The post #oneaday Day 836: Torrent of slop appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

There are some mild Big Walk spoilers ahead. I will not be sharing complete puzzle solutions, but I may talk a bit about the thought process involved in some of them. You have been warned.

I don't think any of us expected the session to go on for so long, since we were in Big Walk's "postgame". We had partly (and correctly) assumed that the postgame would just involve going around and cleaning up any puzzles we didn't complete as part of the process you go through to "beat" the main game, but we were also aware that we'd discovered a place where there were fifteen empty slots for the "Kong" figurines that are your rewards for completing the various puzzles, and thus there was probably still a fair amount of work to do. We didn't know what the end result of doing said work would be, though.

We should have known, really; in our process of beating the main game, there weren't fifteen puzzles left over. And sure enough, once you get into the postgame, a selection of "purple Kong" puzzles unlock in a part of the map that was previously inaccessible. These mostly take the form of challenges similar to puzzles found elsewhere in the game, but made significantly more difficult and/or time-consuming somehow.

That said, there were also two puzzles from our "main game" leftovers which had left us reasonably stumped, so we had intended to come back to them. Both of those proved to be extremely time-consuming, too, so in retrospect it's no surprise that solving fifteen puzzles in total took twelve hours. We did make up for it with one of the other main game leftover puzzles taking us less than two minutes, though, because our team are now Big Walk pros, apparently.

Some of the most interesting challenges we encountered involved having to split up the party in various ways. One puzzle tasked us with looking through telescopes to find a series of four pedestals, and once there was at least one person at each pedestal, we then had to find a way to synchronise our button presses. Another challenged us to find a specific sound somewhere on the island. Another still involved locating things that we had used in various other puzzles and taking them to another location. In each of these situations, the challenge was communicating over a long distance: the game does have walkie-talkie items, but given you are limited in what you can carry — you can hold one thing in your hands, one on a belt loop (once you've found one) and one on a backpack (likewise), but you cannot access the belt or backpack items yourself — it's not always practical for everyone to carry one of these. And besides, you have to find them first anyway!

We found a way in each instance, though. And it wasn't just the long-distance puzzles that gave us these communication challenges, either. One of the "purple Kong" puzzles required us to figure out how to communicate complex information between two different rooms, when one room could use an intercom but the other could only respond by turning a light on or off. Another tasked us with communicating auditory information between rooms with a completely soundproof barrier between them. Another still tested the limits of how precisely we could verbally communicate visual information.

The one we left for last was a harder version of an earlier "golf" puzzle involving an extremely heavy ball that we had solved earlier in the game. The initial, main game implementation of this puzzle was fairly easy to solve, but the postgame variant involved getting the ball over a significantly longer distance, which required some creative thinking and teamwork. Among the many talents and skills that Big Walk tests, patience is one of the most significant of all of them. In this modern, attention-deficit world, I suspect there will be at least some groups who find the patience and endurance challenges to be some of the most taxing.

Still, the "true" ending was worth it, and I was grateful we didn't have to go through the immensely difficult "finale" of the main game again. That finale was a great experience, but having to do it again after twelve hours would have probably killed me.

One thing I really appreciated about Big Walk as a whole is that it's just an excellently designed game. It's a game which understands that when you're tasking people with confronting some significant, cooperative challenges together, it pays to have a clear, distinct visual language that everyone can learn to understand quickly and easily. Subtly, and without explicitly telling the player at any point, it introduces you to various concepts as you progress through the game — many of which are in the "starter area" — and coming to recognise those different elements of the game and what they mean is a key part of learning to play Big Walk effectively. Communicating your understanding of those elements to the rest of your group is important, too; if you know something but the others don't, it won't help the group as a whole if you keep it to yourself!

Anyway, we successfully completed all of the game — with the only thing (I think) we didn't find in our playthrough being the "shiny paint station". It was very much worth it, and if you have at least one good friend to play it with, I highly encourage you to do so — and to take the time to play it from start to finish. It takes a while, but it's very much a worthwhile activity to spend a few sessions on together. I certainly won't be forgetting our experiences in a hurry.

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The post #oneaday Day 835: All night long appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I've had several games on the go recently. My Final Fantasy XI playthrough stalled when Oliver went missing and I haven't picked it up again since that; I've got to a point in that game where it feels quite demanding to play in terms of attention span and patience, and I haven't quite felt up to that yet. That's not a criticism — I think one of the best things about Final Fantasy XI is its depth and complexity — but I do very much have to be in the mood for it. I also have the issue that I finished the bit of the game that I was most interested in playing — the Chains of Promathia expansion — and thus I'm early in Treasures of Aht Urhgan and it hasn't quite "hooked" me in the same way just yet.

I have, however, started a few other games. Probably the "main" one of these I'm playing at the moment is Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, which I've been meaning to have a look at for pretty much the last ten years. I did start it one evening when we had some friends over, we all got a little tipsy and one of them wanted to see an RPG, but I set it aside after that because I was already playing some other things. This time around, I started over (again) and have been thoroughly enraptured by it; it's an excellent game, with speedy combat and progression, a real, genuine sense of adventure, and a compelling story. It's very long for an Ys game — I'm 40 hours in and only just getting hints that we might be getting towards an ending, but my map exploration rate is only about 75% — but I think it works. "What Ys is" has changed a great deal over the years, and it seems that this one is (quite rightly) regarded as one of the best of the "modern Ys" titles.

I've also been playing Suikoden as part of the HD Remaster collection, and I've been mostly enjoying that. It's another game that I feel like I have to be in the right mood for, although this is less to do with its complexity and more to do with its relatively sedate pace of proceedings. I need to get back to it and finish it, because I was enjoying it a lot (aside from the army battles, which suck) and I would like to see how it ends. I also believe it's quite short, and I'm a good way through it, so it would be nice to cross it off the list sooner rather than later. Perhaps I'll play some of that today.

The next "big game" I have on my radar to play is Wadjet Eye Games' Nighthawks, a text-based RPG which is heavily inspired by (but not licensed from) the White Wolf Vampire: The Masquerade setting — with some notable differences, such as "no Masquerade". I played the demo of this a while back and it looks like being something incredibly special. Beautiful art, excellent voice acting, a well-crafted script with memorable characters — I'm looking forward to giving it a good amount of attention, and almost certainly writing something about it once I've spent some time with it.

I was hoping to get both Ys VIII and Suikoden finished before Nighthawks came out, but I don't think that's going to happen, given that Nighthawks is out early next week. I should be able to polish off at least one of them, though; at the rate I'm going, I think Ys VIII is likely to be down for the count first, but we'll see.

On the non-narrative game front, I have been playing Super Mario Galaxy 2 after really enjoying (and completing) the first one while we were away on holiday. I've also been playing Kirby and the Forgotten Land, which is a game I like a lot, but for some reason find it difficult to focus on for long periods of time.

I think part of the issue with Kirby is that each level has a bunch of optional objectives to complete, and it doesn't reveal them until you've either already done them, made progress on one that has multiple steps, or just completed the level without achieving them. In the latter case, it only reveals one of the optional objectives at a time, so if you have absolutely no idea what they are, it takes up to four playthroughs of a single level to get all the Stuff. This feels a bit like padding, but the game as a whole is so charming (and the levels so relatively quick to play through) that I should probably just get over myself and get on with it. I've actually been doing just that at lunchtimes this week.

Finally, this afternoon a group of friends and I will be playing some Big Walk, which we've been working our way through at the weekends. We finished it a few weeks back, but we're going back in to try and clean up some of the puzzles we didn't complete prior to heading for the ending. It's been a really good time; I was worried that it would be another Blue Prince kind of situation, where a bunch of critics lost their shit over how "good" it supposedly was, but I'd end up hating it, but no; I've been really enjoying it.

Anyway, that's where I am. I think some Ys for a few hours, then Big Walk later. Then tomorrow I'll do some video recording. Sounds like a plan to me!

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The post #oneaday Day 834: Gaming update appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

One recurring feature of this Adventure coverage back in the early '80s was a marked disdain for graphics. To the devoted Adventurer, the most vivid, spectacular images of all are those which are conjured up by one's own mind when reading some well-crafted prose, and thus no form of computer graphics would ever be able to match up to the possibilities afforded by one's own imagination.

There was a certain amount of pretentiousness here, yes, but they also had something of a point at the time; the graphical capabilities of home computers at the time were relatively limited, at least until the 16-bit micros became more well-established, and thus in many cases the graphics in illustrated adventures were somewhat… primitive, to say the least. In cases where they weren't, you ran into another problem: memory and storage space. Since 8-bit micros had anywhere between 8 and 128 kilobytes of RAM on offer, there was a hard limit on how much game data you could include in a game — and "data" in this case covered both descriptive text and graphics.

On systems with widespread disk drive adoption, such as the Atari 8-bit and C64, this issue was at least partly sidestepped by publishing Adventures on floppy disk, with the relevant data being loaded into memory from the disk only when needed — something it was only possible to do with the random access of a disk, since cassettes could only load data in a linear fashion (and took a long time to do it anyway). You still ran into hard caps, though: a disk could only hold so much.

It became pretty widely agreed among Adventure enthusiasts that straight-up text-only Adventures were always going to be the superior option, because you could fit a lot more text than graphics into either memory or the available space on a floppy disk, and the sort of person playing an Adventure was likely to be someone who enjoys reading anyway. So leave the fancy graphics for the arcade game fans and keep giving those Adventure fans that delicious plain text!

It didn't last, of course. As graphics technology got better, computers had more memory and storage solutions had greater capacity, we got to a point where it was possible to have well-written Adventures that also had excellent illustrations. Some of the earliest to see success in this regard were the titles from Magnetic Scrolls, such as The Pawn, The Guild of Thieves and Jinxter. These still placed most of the emphasis on the text, but the illustrations (which could be turned off) supported the story.

Then we started to get more in the way of "graphic adventures", beginning with Sierra's "3-D Animated Adventure Games" such as the King's Quest series, which initially gave you direct control of an on-screen character while keeping interaction via a text parser. From there, we ended up with the entirely mouse-driven point-and-click adventure, as popularised by titles such as Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island. At that point, the purely text-based Adventure appeared to have been completely left by the wayside in favour of a more visual form of interactive entertainment. In many respects, this made these games a lot more accessible to those who perhaps weren't comfortable attempting to communicate with a computer by typing verb-noun phrases, but for those who still enjoyed to read, things were never quite the same again.

Today, of course, there's the never-ending push for photorealism that has been taken to its natural, absurd extreme with technologies like Nvidia's AI slop bimbofication filter, sorry, DLSS5, and some people are, quite understandably, starting to feel fatigued with how a lot of games feel like they look very similar to one another. What happened to using our imaginations as the ultimate graphics chipset?

Well, good news: the good old text-based Adventure never died! In fact, it quietly flourished as the years went on, with an enthusiast community continuing to make use of this venerable but undeniably effective means of enjoying an interactive story — and even creating their own original Adventures that would have gone down extremely well with the Adventure enthusiasts of the early 1980s. Meanwhile, the similar-but-different visual novel genre has enjoyed gradual but steady growth over a similar period, making its way from niche-interest curiosity to something quite commonly seen today. People, it turns out, still like to read.

Every so often, I get a hankering to explore some text-based games. What I have referred to in the preceding paragraphs as Adventures tend to be described as "Interactive Fiction" these days. If you're being particularly pedantic, there is a difference between "Interactive Fiction" and "Text Adventure" — the former emphasises an unfolding text-based story, while the latter has greater focus on exploration and puzzle-solving — but "IF" tends to be used as a shorthand for all text-based, parser-driven games these days, and it also encompasses games that use multiple-choice or hypertext interfaces, such as those made with the popular Twine tool.

Thankfully, there are plenty of places to explore Interactive Fiction. A good place to have a look is the annual IFComp, or Interactive Fiction Competition. Right now, you can download and play a whole host of games that cover probably every piece of subject matter you might be able to think of. And you (yes, you!) can judge them, too. I bet you'd like that. You love judging things, don't you. Well, go on then! Go judge something! I think I know what I'm doing tomorrow!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 820: We need the Adventure-obsessives back again appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

There are lots of contributing factors to this, but the things that come immediately mind today both relate to Final Fantasy VII Revelation, the upcoming third and final part of the Final Fantasy Remake project. We have a release date for it at last — April 8, 2027 — but two things came to light today which pissed me right off: firstly, the fact that not one, but two pieces of DLC and an "expansion pass" have been announced for it more than half a year before the game has been released, and secondly, the physical editions on all platforms will require you to download the bulk of the game rather than installing it from disc, thereby making said physical editions almost completely worthless.

On the first point: you have spent three games telling this story which once took one 40-hour game to tell. Just include everything in this fucking final part.

Those who have embraced an "all-digital" future will doubtless not be bothered by the second point, but I am someone who has cultivated a collection of over a thousand physical releases across a variety of platforms, and a big part of the reason I have done that is as a sort of investment in my future entertainment: for the next significant number of years, I will be able to enjoy a whole variety of different video game experiences on a bunch of different consoles. And with this looking like it may well be the last generation of consoles I have any interest in whatsoever, thanks to Sony's plans to give up physical media and the adoption of the odious "Game-Key Cards" on Switch 2, it feels increasingly important to have all that stuff ready to play.

Now, for a lot of the stuff I've bought, I can just put it in a console and play it. It's one of the big reasons why I've bought a lot of limited-print stuff — I know a lot of people don't like those companies for various reasons, but one thoroughly admirable thing that pretty much all of them have committed to is only putting out a physical version when a game is finished. That means you buy it, you put it in, you play it. No downloading updates; no DLC (there have been a few exceptions to this, but for the most part anything that was once DLC is included in these physical versions) and no requirement to be connected to the Internet. You know, like physical media always was prior to everything we own being perpetually connected to the Internet, and gradually, slowly but surely, getting increasingly fucked-up over time?

This news for Final Fantasy VII Revelation fucks with this, though. I have copies of Final Fantasy VII Remake and Rebirth that I can install from disc and play right now, even if my Internet connection isn't working — or, in the years to come, if Sony were to decide to just switch off the servers that were delivering downloadable game files to people. Were I to buy a physical copy of Revelation, though, I would not be able to do that, because the whole game isn't on the damned disc. So what happens if, in 20 or 30 years, assuming I'm still around and capable of playing video games at that point, I decide I want to replay the entire Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy? I just… can't play the last bit if the servers are no longer online?

And you might think that's an extreme scenario, but there are games I have on my shelf that are 30+ years old that I am still pulling down and playing. And I will continue to play an original copy by choice if it is available. So it's entirely possible that multiple decades from now, I will want to play something that was released in the 2020s.

Of course, it's also possible that in the future, storage costs will continue to plummet, and it will be practical to have some form of storage device loaded up with a huge library of PS5 and Switch 2 games, just like I have a chunky SSD full of everything from Atari 2600 up to PlayStation and Saturn games hooked up to my MiSTer. At that point, physical copies may well have ceased to matter.

Couple all this with Sony's eagerness to fight the apparently mistaken assumption that we are "buying" games when we click the "buy" button in their "store", and it doesn't give one a lot of hope for the long-term preservation of what is still, at its core, an incredibly exciting creative, artistic medium.

At this rate, we're going to have everything up to about PlayStation 2 preserved perfectly, but after that things are going to start getting a lot more patchy. No pun intended, given the additional considerations that post-launch updates bring to the table.

I dunno. Maybe I shouldn't bother thinking about this stuff. It's entirely possible that by the time any of my concerns actually start to matter, I'll be long dead. I just don't like seeing something that I have cared deeply about for my whole life continually make itself worse and worse and worse, all in the name of the "perpetual growth" rot economy and the pursuit of never-ending, continually unsatisfied greed. I don't want to feel that future generations simply won't be able to enjoy gaming the way I've enjoyed it for the last 40+ years. And it's hard to flip the switch to the "I don't care, just enjoy it now" setting, after so long of actually caring!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 818: Gaming is doing everything it can to drive its oldest fans away appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

As I found myself reviewing the latter-day issues in the magazine's run, though, I found myself feeling an intense sense of melancholy and almost mourning, I guess. Over the course of the publication's complete run, you can see at a glance when it was doing the best (full-colour covers with specially commissioned artwork or photography to appear prominently and attractively on newsstands) and when things started to go downhill (single-colour covers, the return to a subscription-only model) and when things were nearing the end (a switch to an A5 format, with less and less in the way of commercial releases covered each issue).

Here's a shot from Atarimania, which hosts a full archive of Page 6/New Atari User issues, that shows three stages of this evolution:

I found myself feeling sad all over again while working my way through these issues — because I remember this happening first time around. I remember getting Page 6/New Atari User every month, and in those latter years, feeling like something which had been a fixture in my life for as long as I could remember was ailing and would eventually die. Page 6 started before I was old enough to know what a computer or a magazine was, so it was always present throughout my childhood and adolescence.

Its final issue — in which the editor, Les Ellingham, made an unfortunately unkept promise to readers that there would be six more issues of the magazine before it finally closed for good — is a sad read. Even my Dad, who had been a contributor from midway through the magazine's run up until its very last issue, had given up writing about specifically Atari-related stuff, and was instead posting a regular column about the wonders of the then-nascent (at least in consumer-accessible form) Internet and World Wide Web. My article spreadsheet has just a single game-related entry for that final issue: a public domain version of Tetris for Atari 8-bit.

One of the most remarkable things about Page 6/New Atari User is that it wasn't the Atari ST coverage which lasted until the b(l)itter end. No; the last few issues contained pretty much nothing but Atari 8-bit coverage, which provided the first hints of the fact that the "Atari Classic" scene, as the magazine referred to it at the time, would continue to thrive in the years to come, even in the absence of a major specialist publication.

The ST scene is still alive too, but I can't help but feel like there's a lot more Atari 8-bit enthusiasts out there than Atari ST people. After all, the ST marked the beginning of the shift towards all home computing being PC-based; the ST certainly had its own distinctive, unique features, but it also marked a point where the distinction between purportedly different platforms was less pronounced in various ways. Thus, I suspect what happened, is people who were once ST enthusiasts just sort of… "upgraded" to MS-DOS and then Windows-based PCs and then never looked back. That's certainly what my family did — although I certainly never quite left the Atari machines behind, as they had been so important to me growing up, and continue to be important to me to this day.

Anyway, the thing I think I find most sad about the slow death of Page 6/New Atari User is that it was clearly taking a mental toll on Les. In some of the last few issues, he described how the editor of an American Atari newsletter had found himself succumbing to ill health, at least partly due to the stress of working on his publication, and he indicated that he had no desire to do himself a mischief in the same way — particularly because, in these latter years, he was also trying to support himself with handmade crafts. In one of the last issues, he mentions that he thinks he might have to get a part-time job to continue supporting himself, because between the magazine and his crafts, there was no longer enough money coming in to completely make ends meet.

But all good things have to eventually come to an end, and in the tech space in particular, the rate at which things progress can be absolutely mind-boggling at times. I don't think there's any shame in Page 6/New Atari User's eventual bowing out, even with the regrettably unkept promise from Les' final editorial. To consider that this was a publication which continuously supported both the Atari 8-bit and, once it hit the market, the ST, from 1983 up until 1998 is absolutely mindblowing. Les' refusal to let go until it was absolutely, definitely no longer viable to continue in any way whatsoever is incredibly admirable — as is the commitment of the freelance contributors who kept sending in articles issue after issue, without fail, like my Dad.

So yeah. While reliving the end of something that brought me so much joy as a child has made me a little bit maudlin, I also continue to celebrate everything this publication achieved — and continue to derive joy from it as I grow older, since I am now in possession of the complete run of issues that I grew up with.

It saddens me a bit that when something similar happens these days, in the form of a website going down and no longer being accessible, that there is often no easy way to simply look back fondly over past "issues" in the same way as you can with a magazine. There are many, many online publications that are just gone these days, and while The Internet Archive has done an incredible job of preserving some of them, there are others that we'll just never see again in any form. I know — I've worked on a bunch of them, and now most of my articles are now buried, nigh-unsearchable, in the archives of other sites that ingested the data of the closing publications, often introducing a bunch of errors in the process.

Page 6/New Atari User, though, that will always exist in the form that I knew and loved it. So although I'm sad all over again at the end of such an important publication, I know that I will continue to derive joy — and attain knowledge — from browsing that archive of issues over and over again. One day I might even get around to learning how to program the Atari 8-bits properly beyond simple BASIC. You never know.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 814: Death of a publication appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

One of the things Big Walk continually impresses on you is the importance of communication, whether that's communicating over short to moderate distances in order to collaborate on puzzles, taking the time to just have a chat, or finding a means to get one another's attention from a long distance apart if you happen to find yourself separated.

I suspect every group will find their own ways of dealing with this particular challenge — and every group will have its own members that, for one reason or another, present additional challenges to everyone, including themselves — but it's something you will likely settle into fairly quickly in collaboration with your walking partners. I'd be interested to try it with other people and see how different the dynamic is between group members and group sizes — though I'm also conscious that once you've solved a lot of these puzzles once, it's a lot easier to play through the game, so I don't know how inherently replayable the whole thing is.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because towards the end of the game, Big Walk takes away two very important things that you have likely been using for your communication up until this point: your visual identity — in other words, the colours you have chosen to represent your character, which you can "paint" onto each other in the introductory stage of the game — and your voice.

Yes, the finale sequence of Big Walk completely takes away the ability to voice chat with one another, meaning you will have to find ways of communicating not only each participant's part in a puzzle solution, but also determine between you what on Earth you are supposed to do in each puzzle.

Thankfully, Big Walk does have a fairly robust gesturing system that allows you a surprising amount of flexibility in terms of waggling your noodle arms around, but you still have to find a way to agree what each gesture means, having likely not had an opportunity to do so verbally beforehand — unless, of course, you had the foresight to do so "just in case" you were not able to communicate through voice. But why would you need to do that? Taking players' voices away in a game built around cooperative play and communication would just be mean, wouldn't it?

Well, yes, it would, but it also makes Big Walk's finale sequence incredibly memorable. There are, I think, seven puzzles you have to complete in the run up to the actual ending, and each challenges your group to think on their feet and find a way to get various messages across to one another without using words and without being able to visually identify who is whom. It really works extraordinarily well — I won't spoil the actual solutions for the puzzles here, for the sake of anyone who didn't heed my spoiler warning but is still intending to actually play Big Walk, but I'll just say that the "kettle puzzle" was my favourite for how gleefully silly it was.

Anyway, once you finish Big Walk, there is a "postgame" to play, too, which we're probably going to tackle in a subsequent session. There are a lot of puzzles on the map that we didn't solve in our various explorations, and we found a place where you have to put a whopping fifteen of the collectible thingies (we call them "Kongs" after their resemblance to a classic dog toy) in order to do… something? We don't know what yet ,though I have a suspicion. That's a job for another day though.

I'm impressed how substantial the game actually is. It took us three very long sessions to get through the entirety of the "main" game, and there's still a fair bit more for us to do. This is one of numerous reasons why I don't think it fits into the ill-defined "friendslop" category; to me, "friendslop" says games that you play with your friends that are over and done with in one session, and which "don't matter". Not in the sense that they're worthless, but in the sense that they don't have a long-term overarching goal; each session is self-contained, like an individual play of a board game, rather than part of a broader "campaign" in which you're working together to achieve something.

Anyway. I had fun! And aside from one of those finale puzzles, which I found very difficult to get my head around for some reason (as did everyone else, I think) I am relieved that Big Walk, despite whipping much of games media into a similar frenzy as we saw for Blue Prince last year, is a very different sort of experience. And for me, it's nice to actually be able to enjoy an indie darling for once, because on a significant number of past occasions, they have left me cold. This led me to doubt that Big Walk would actually be any good, but I'm glad I decided to give it a try. It was very much worth it.

Now it's nearly 1am and I need to sleep. But that was, indeed, a Big Walk.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 813: That sure was a big walk appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I joke, of course. This is actually proving to be a very valuable, helpful exercise for a variety of reasons: first of all is my originally stated, intended purpose for all this: to be able to easily track down press coverage for games I might want to do videos on for my Atari A to Z and Atari ST A to Z series. But some other benefits are coming to light, too. For example, a number of these games have multiple entries on the list thanks to being featured in various types of articles — besides straight-up individual title reviews, there are also compilation reviews and broader topic roundups — which means I can see how (or if) various titles were responded to differently by different reviewers or in different contexts.

Sometimes a game might be a hard sell at full price, but a decent use of some pocket money if and when it comes to a budget label. Sometimes a game might not have resonated with one reviewer, but really hit home with another — or vice versa. Sometimes a game might be a good inclusion as part of a compilation, but not quite strong enough to stand on its own merits. It's interesting to see all these things, and to have the various issues that relate to the various mentions of all these titles at my fingertips.

The other main benefit is more personal. I originally stopped doing the regular Atari A to Z and Atari ST A to Z series because I was worried I was running out of interesting things to talk about. This nearly 1,200 line spreadsheet — which is set to increase considerably in size as I continue to review Page 6/New Atari User issues up until the final Issue 85 from Autumn 1998 — has shown me that there is a veritable wealth of stuff I haven't even thought about tackling as yet. Whether or not I'll be able to stick to the original "A to Z" formula I haven't yet determined — as you might expect, there are some letters that just aren't all that commonly used to begin titles — but in terms of the sheer number of things, to have this amount just from one magazine's run is kind of incredible.

Once this process is finished, I would like to expand my efforts to other magazines. Initially I will likely cover the other early Atari magazines — Atari User, Antic and ANALOG being the main ones — but may well expand to some slightly later ones such as Atari ST User and ST Action, both of which I used to read back in the day. I'm already seeing with the choice of titles covered just in Page 6/New Atari User that they didn't even attempt to cover absolutely everything that was coming out in time for each issue, so it's very likely indeed that each magazine I look at will cover different things at different times. This, in turn, will make it interesting to compare reactions to titles between a European (Page 6 and New Atari User) and North American (Antic and ANALOG) audience, among other things.

Anyway, this is a substantial project, but it's going well and I'm getting a little bit done each day. I've already got more than enough to make use of when I start up the video production machine again, but it would be great to have enough material to last me a very long time indeed. (Honestly, I probably already have that, but the more the merrier, I say.)

I'm actually getting quite excited about rediscovering this focused approach. Checking the dismal viewing figures on my recent Terranigma video only convinced me further that this is probably the right thing to do for the sake of my own enjoyment. It may not necessarily lead to particularly impressive viewing figures, income, subscribers or anything like that — but honestly, I'm happy with how my channel has gradually grown over the course of the last few years. I have nearly 4,200 subscribers on YouTube now, and I would guess that a significant proportion of them are there for the Atari stuff that was my channel's main focus for quite some time. Switching over to something that I specialise in allows me to say "fuck The Algorithm, this is for me and anyone who happens to want to come along for the ride". And that's much more fun when the whole thing is supposed to be a hobby!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 812: Research update appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

As my thoughts wandered during my little 2km circuit of the Common, I started to think about why I haven't really played it much since (checks dates on Achievements) 2020? No, I definitely played it well before that. Mid-2010s. They probably added Achievements later after some entitled little prick on Steam got pissy that they couldn't have their meaningless shinies. (checks blog) Ah. 2012. Fuck me.

Anyway, before I got distracted, what was my point? Oh, right, the reason why I haven't played this all that much since 2012… and a brief return in 2020, apparently. I think it's because A Valley Without Wind is one of those games that there is no real "end" to. You have a long-term objective to complete, yes — defeating an Overlord — but once you do that, the game continues. There is a never-ending stream of Overlords to defeat, of gradually increasing difficulty, but, as far as I am aware, no way to "win"; no way to "beat" the game completely.

As time has gone on, for one reason or another, I have drifted away from games like this, and I'm not entirely sure why, because it's certainly not because I don't enjoy them. Over the years, I've had a lot of fun with various types of "freeform" experience, ranging from Starflight on Atari ST through SimCity on SNES, SimCity 2000, SimCopter, The Sims, The Sims 2, The Sims 3 on PC, and, yes, A Valley Without Wind. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I absolutely adored A Valley Without Wind when I first started playing it.

There was just something about it that… resonated with me. It was probably a combination of things: the janky but creative gameplay; the sense of emergent narrative; the chiptune-esque music; the baffling aesthetic which looked like half the team wanted to make an Amiga game and the other half knew what "Super VGA" meant. I played that game a lot when I first got it, although Steam claims I've only played it for 10 hours. I'm pretty sure the bulk of my playtime was before Steam started recording how long you'd played something.

But yeah. I haven't gone back. And I think the reason is that knowledge that it doesn't end. There's no way to "finish" the game, and thus it feels like there's never a good time to start it. This is a silly way to think about it, of course; there are lots of really good games that never end, and if I thought this about all of them, I'd never play any of them!

Weeeelll… I kind of don't. Y'see, I find finishing games enormously satisfying, and I love seeing the variety of different ways that games handle a narrative and/or mechanical finale sequence. Given that my tastes tend to skew towards the narrative-centric RPG end of things, you can see how I might find it tricky to figure out how to fit in a game like A Valley Without Wind. It's easy to fall into a trap of feeling that these games have no "point"; that it's not worth starting them if you can't finish them.

And yet I'm conscious that I'm deliberately depriving myself of things that I know I enjoy. Focusing on one or two "Big Games" at a time is certainly a good way to get through your library and, over the long-term, have a range of experiences that are both broad and deep. But it certainly doesn't hurt to punctuate those Big Games that have a definitive beginning, middle and end with something that just… doesn't end.

I mean, I have no problem spending an evening playing arcade games. Some of those never end. Even the ones that do are built to be replayed. And so why am I holding myself back from playing games that I know I like?

Perhaps I just need to make more time for experiences like this, and stop worrying about whether or not it's ever the "right" time to play something in particular. If I'm in the mood to play something, just play the damn thing!

Aren't brains fun? We're talking about something that is supposed to be relaxing entertainment here, and here I am, agonising and stressing over it. I need to stop doing that and just do what feels right, fun and just plain nice in the moment.

I need to go and have a bath as I'm stinky and sweaty after walking 2km in what turned out to be an incredibly humid evening. But after that, y'know what? I might just fire up A Valley Without Wind for the first time in six years. And realise that I have almost certainly completely forgotten how to play it.

(Aside: you can finish A Valley Without Wind 2, and in many ways it's a better game, with a belter of a theme song. But there's something I've always just really, really liked about the first one.)

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 811: Playing a game with no "point" appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I've been going through old magazines — just Page 6/New Atari User to begin with, but I will expand my efforts at a later time — to determine which issues had reviews (or otherwise substantial articles) of what in them, and recording that information in a big ol' searchable, filterable, sortable table. Or, y'know, a spreadsheet. (I guess this makes me a "spreadsheet person" after years of resisting such things.)

This will (hopefully) make it much easier to track down these articles when researching something — and might also give me some ideas on what to cover, too.

One of the things I find most interesting when either revisiting old favourites or discovering new ones is taking a look at what the "professionals" had to say about them, and seeing if they treated them fairly, or if they were talking nonsense. I don't really mind either way; there is value to both confirming a critical opinion from back in the day, and having the opportunity to look at it from a more detached, modern perspective and perhaps disagreeing with what was said back then.

It's also kind of interesting to, in some cases, give these games a bit more time and attention than they might have perhaps had back in the day, particularly if the reviewer in question clearly didn't have a lot of time to spend with them, or didn't understand them completely. I mean, we're only talking a play session of maybe 20-60 minutes when it comes to most of my videos, but sometimes you do notice properly intriguing things about games after spending a bit of protracted time with them, rather than spending a few minutes on them and then moving on to something else.

Alongside the traditional "reviews", I'm also recording mentions of games in things like topic-based roundups, type-in games (which can be just as interesting and worthwhile as commercial software!) and… basically any mention of something I might want to cover, and which I might want to refer to what was being said about it Back In The Day.

It's going to take a while to compile all this information — particularly if I want to throw other magazines into the mix — but I think it's going to be a worthwhile endeavour that will be helpful for the direction I think I want to take the YouTube channel (back) in. It also gives me a good reason to look back at old computer and video games magazines, and I will always welcome any opportunity to do that. Not that I need a reason. But it is nice to have a reason to do so.

Anyway, my intent is still to hold fire on YouTube until after our holiday, then get back into the swing of things with the rebooted Atari A to Z and Atari ST A to Z series in mid-September, likely with my first recording session being the weekend of the 19th (meaning the first of the new videos will come out the following week). I'm sure I'll have a good chunk of this organising done by then, and I think it will be enormously helpful in adding some additional insight to my videos that will hopefully be as interesting for anyone watching them as it is for me making them.

Right this second, though, after taking care of 28 issues of Page 6 today, I think I've earned a bit of video game time. So it's back to Ys VIII for me!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 810: Compiling information appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

RIP Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton passed away at the age of 80. This is very sad news indeed, because Dolly Parton was the living embodiment of goodness. Among many, many other things, she made great music, she always came across as a thoroughly pleasant person in interviews and suchlike, she was an incredible ally to LGBTQ+ folks, she was responsible for millions of books being distributed for free to youngsters across the world, and above all, she was proof that you can be rich, beautiful, famous and not a shitty person in the slightest, all at the same time.

There seems to be some sort of unspoken assumption that you can only be a maximum of three of those at the same time (and it's usually rich, beautiful and famous) but Dolly proved that there was, in fact, no obligation to become a total piece of shit just because you were loaded.

Apparently Dolly's family has requested that in lieu of flowers and other memorials/condolences, people make a donation to the Dolly Parton's Imagination Library organisation. I've done just that, and I encourage you to consider doing so also. It is fitting that her generosity and selflessness continues even after her passing.

That's about all I am able to say on the subject for the minute, but I wanted to mark the occasion, at least.

Manic Miner's getting a dogshit-looking "remake"

I'll let you into a not-so-secret, dear reader: I don't think ZX Spectrum classic Manic Miner is very good. It has music that makes you want to tear your ears off, visuals that are… functional at best, gameplay that is unnecessarily infuriating and a difficulty curve that is more like a vertical wall, meaning I'm sure there are a significant number of people who have never seen beyond the first screen. There are many, many better single-screen platformers on 8-bit home computers — some of my favourites are Mr Robot and His Robot Factory and Miner 2049'er — and yet a lot of them just don't get their dues, while Manic Miner is consistently held up as an all-time classic. And don't even get me started on Jet Set Willy.

Anyway, BBG Entertainment GmbH — the people who have done some Boulder Dash reboots that are… not bad gameplay wise but kind of dogshit aesthetically — have decided what the world needs is a Manic Miner remake. And, moreover, they decided what a Manic Miner remake really needed was some absolute dog-arse generative AI for its visuals, trailer, pretty much everything. Including one of the most laughable "CRT filters" I think I have ever seen. Not only that, they have been very quiet on whether or not any AI has actually been used, by which I mean there is no AI usage disclosure on the game's Steam page.

(Yes, comments are disabled on YouTube, before you go and check.)

And, I mean, come on. Look at it. Look at it. Even the "retro" screens are wrong in terms of layout! Fuck's sake. If this isn't generative AI, they need to fire their art person. But let's face it, they probably already did that, which is why this has happened.

This isn't the first company doing some sort of "retro revival" who has shat out AI-generated garbage artwork all over a property that actually means something to some people and then denied that they have done so. Hey, I don't like Manic Miner at all, but I know plenty of people who do, and I feel bad for them to see garbage like this.

I've said it many, many times before, but I cannot fucking wait for this goddamn bubble to pop so we can be free of this never-ending torrent of shit.

Commodore is putting out a Cyberpunk 2077-themed C64 Ultimate

Why? In what world does this make any sense as a crossover? Plus with the relabelled keys it looks like a nightmare from a usability perspective, too. But I'm sure someone somewhere will buy it, then leave it in a box on a shelf and, roughly every 6 months or so, mention on all the Discord servers they're in, with an odd amount of pride, that they bought it and have never actually unpacked it.

Burnout Revenge

I have been feeling a bit burnt out on YouTube of late. I put out a video on Terranigma that I thought was a good adaptation of my article on MoeGamer, and it has performed like crap, even with yesterday's announcement of the Terranigma remake. I just don't even know any more. YouTube is so incredibly unpredictable over what does well and what does poorly, and sometimes these things change massively over time, too. I have stuff that I put out several years ago which performed poorly to modestly on their original release, but which now has thousands of views — and I have stuff that I worked hard on and was very proud of which has done less than a hundred views. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to it — and, to be frank, I can't really be arsed to chase the why.

I feel like at some point I have drifted away from the things that used to have me fired up about doing things on YouTube. I have wanted to incorporate a much broader spectrum of things to reflect my own interests, but aside from a couple of standout exceptions to the rule, I don't feel that experiment has really been much of a success. And it's getting me down a bit; I don't particularly want or need YouTube to be a "big thing" for me, but it is nice when you do something and more than a handful of people appreciate what you do.

So I'm going to take a break from YouTube completely until I come back from holiday in mid-September, and at that time I'm going to do a sort of soft reboot back to some things I used to do, only with a bit more in the way of knowledge that I've picked up in the intervening years since I did them first time around. Specifically, I think I'm going to bring back Atari A to Z and Atari ST A to Z, because those series had a nice sense of structure to them, they were easy to produce but could result in a combination of celebrating big hits and discovering new favourites — and, perhaps most importantly, I really enjoyed making them.

Beyond that, I'll likely still do some occasional "scripted" videos when I feel like it, and perhaps some Evercade games, too, but so far as stuff outside of my "core" subject matter of Atari home computer stuff, it will be the exception rather than the norm. I basically built my audience for that channel on Atari-related videos, and I wonder if attempting to branch out to other platforms has just basically caused YouTube to go "we don't know what this channel is any more", meaning things like my Terranigma video just… go nowhere.

That's the plan, anyway. I will be using the things I've learned about thumbnail design and all that good stuff — plus continue with my current channel branding — and get things back to basics. At least then if only a handful of people watch my stuff, I know it's because they're genuinely interested in what I'm doing, rather than picking up on trends.

So yeah. Watch out for that in mid-September. In the meantime, go watch my Terranigma video. It'd be nice to at least get the sodding thing over 100 views.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 809: Dolly, Willy and... uh... silly? appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This is excellent news, because it means I can buy a copy and not feel bad about playing it through on MiSTer. Not that I did anyway, but it will be very nice to own an actual legitimate copy and not have to pay through the nose for a cart-only SNES copy that almost certainly has a flat save battery and might not even work at all. I might even play it through again to see what improvements have been made.

For the most part, it looks as if the game is going to be kept true to its original incarnation. There's some modern-day UI fluff including bezels and an optional floating EXP window (that will be nice to have, actually) plus the promise of some new art and remastered music tracks, but we don't have many details about all that just yet. For most people, just the opportunity to own a copy of this excellent game will be enough — even if it's a modern rerelease and not the original original version.

Before anyone asks: no, I don't know if this means we'll be able to get it on Evercade. I will certainly be mentioning it to the people who make such decisions, but as I have said numerous times before, I have no control over that part of the business and thus it will simply be an emphatic suggestion. Square Enix is a company we haven't worked with as yet — although we have worked with TAITO, who are technically part of that whole conglomerate now, so I guess we sort of have. What I'd really love to see, personally, would be a cart that contains, at the very least, Soul Blazer, Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma, plus ideally Actraiser and The Granstream Saga also. Maybe one day I will be part of making that happen. We'll have to see.

But anyway! If you've never played Terranigma, you're in for a treat. If you want to know more, go check out my in-depth piece on it over on MoeGamer (linked above), but the short version is this: it's an excellent 16-bit action RPG that still looks, sounds and plays really well today. The English localisation is a little bit clunky — though nowhere near as broken as that seen in Illusion of Gaia — but it gets the incredibly ambitious storyline across, and the gameplay is absolutely wonderful.

It's nice to share some good news for once. I hope you all remember to pick up Terranigma this time, because I will not be having any mercy on you if you miss your chance this time around and then come crying to me about having to pay hundreds of quid for a copy. It's there. It's coming. You know what to do.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 808: Terranigma is coming back! appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm not entirely sure where this sense came from. Perhaps from years of playing old computer games that didn't include an automap facility. Perhaps from time in the Cub Scouts, at least part of which involved knowing how to read a map. Perhaps from how I used to enjoy just looking at maps. I remember having a kids' world atlas that I absolutely loved just… looking at.

Or perhaps it's something I developed a bit later. I know that I certainly became particularly aware of it once I had left home for university, because it came in very handy every time I got absolutely smashed and had to somehow find my way home in the dark. Despite numerous very drunken evenings, there was not one single occasion where I didn't make it home — even when the night had, for one reason or another, concluded at the house of someone I didn't know very well in an unfamiliar part of town.

Did I develop this skill back then? Perhaps. But it's something that's stuck around with me. I also feel very conscious of it any time I drive to a new city, because I tend to find that I can get a good feel for how all the roads connect to one another quite quickly, even when it's a place I've never been before. This came in quite handy any time I had a job interview in an unfamiliar place, because it meant that even if I initially had trouble finding the place I was supposed to go to — I always left with plenty of time to spare just in case this happened — I would come away from the day with a better understanding of this new place. This is information that may or may not have ended up being useful in the future, depending on whether or not I ended up getting the job.

I do find it especially helpful in virtual worlds, particularly when you have an experience like Big Walk which deliberately eschews the trappings of modern game user interfaces in favour of a more minimalist experience that is dependent on cooperation and communication. On multiple occasions in our session this evening, I was able to lead us right back to something we had previously visited without having to look at a map, and this, I feel, is a helpful quality in a group that is effectively orienteering in the wilderness in the hope of finding exciting and intriguing puzzles to complete. (Okay, I did take a wrong turn once, but nobody's completely perfect.)

One of the things I've determined via various means that I could really do with getting better at is acknowledging the things I am actually good at; the things about me that other people might actually value; the things that I can be proud of and feel okay about feeling proud of. After this evening's session, I feel quite confident in saying that yes, I am quite proud of my sense of direction; I feel it is a useful skill that can help both myself and others, and I am glad to be enjoying an experience where it actually comes in handy, and where people value it.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 806: Absolute Direction (5 points) appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Like I say, it wasn't always like this, though. Back in the SNES era, I, like literally everyone else I knew, had a copy of Street Fighter II, and played it to absolute death. I remember chatting about it with friends at school, discussing the various characters' endings — back then, people still respected the single-player mode of fighting games rather than treating them as the afterthought they seem to be today — and bragging about how easy we found such-and-such a special move to perform. (My friend Andrew was the only one of us who, he claimed at least, could perform Zangief's Spinning Piledriver.)

Beyond that, I remember having a good time with the original Tekken and Soul Blade on PlayStation, Soulcalibur on Dreamcast, the aforementioned Dead or Alive… it all feels a world away right now.

The obvious answer to this is to just try and play a fighting game again. But the temptation, given the amount of information out there today, is to try and look something up; to try and find a guide to "getting good" at one of these games, before you even start actually just playing it.

The trouble is, most guides these days — even supposed beginners' guides — are filled with impenetrable jargon, and move on to complex concepts way too quickly, making the prospect of even thinking about trying a new game difficult to contemplate. I read a guide the other day that said when you are learning a new fighting game from scratch, one of the first things you should do is look at a wiki and learn the framedata for the character you want to play.

Not "play the game, see how you like it" or "pick a character that you find sexually attractive, consider an aspirational figure or think is amusing for some reason". Look at a wiki and learn the framedata.

Now, while I won't deny that once you're taking a game seriously to a particularly sweaty degree, looking at a wiki and learning the framedata probably is helpful — but man! When you're someone who doesn't really know how to play a fighting game, like at all, but is interested in learning at the very least the basics, and then you're hit with something that sounds like the exact opposite of fun as one of the first things you're suggested to do… well, that doesn't feel like much of an incentive to play!

This is the trouble with having too much information available and the baggage that a large and active "community" brings. Back in the SNES era — and even onwards into the Dreamcast and early PS2/Xbox ages — none of us knew what the "FGC" was, and we didn't need to know. If we were lucky, we still had the original manual for Street Fighter II and knew that a fireball move was down, diagonal, forward and punch, and that was, somehow, enough. The way we played would have probably been considered "button mashing" by someone who knew the game extremely well, but again, it didn't matter! We were having fun with the game, we were enjoying playing it — and we were able to play it well enough to (after a lot of continues, in most cases) actually beat the single-player mode.

Like I say, though, the single-player mode of fighting games is seemingly barely given any thought whatsoever these days. The assumption from most of the "guides" out there appears to be that you must always be looking to get ready for competitive action, to be on top of your versus game, and to be able to perform every move absolutely flawlessly, exactly when you need to perform it. Playing against a computer? Ugh, literally disgusting. Get online and get wrecked, because that's the only way you'll learn.

That may be true, but I wonder how many other people out there are like me: having once enjoyed something like Street Fighter II before all this "advice" was everywhere, but now feel completely and utterly intimidated and demoralised any time they even contemplate picking up a new fighter — to such a degree that they just never even try a game that could potentially become an all-time favourite?

As I say above, I think the answer, honestly, is to simply ignore all this and just have a go. If you're only fighting against the computer, it doesn't matter if you suck. If the only skills you develop are "how to beat the computer" — and you do so enough to be able to see a favourite character's ending on a handful of credits? I think that can be enough.

I think you can make it enough. So y'know what? I think I'm going to make an effort to have a go at some of these absolutely beautiful NEOGEO games we have on Evercade. Sure, I'll likely be turning the difficulty level down to the minimum, at least to begin with — but that sounds a lot more fun than looking at charts full of numbers, abbreviations and terms like "Greco-Roman cancel". At least for now. Maybe I'll find myself wanting to do that at some point down the line — but for now, just playing the game sounds like a good idea.

Now the only question is which game to pick…?

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 805: Quarter-circle forward appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For some reason, a lot of people making animated series seem to have fallen into the trap of thinking there is only one way you can possibly make this sort of thing: irony-poisoned "adult animation" with a complete lack of sincerity and earnestness. And it fucking sucks!

Now, I'm not someone who swears off the sort of genre-savvy, quasi-fourth wall-breaking meta-comedy style as an automatic and immediate matter of course. There is a time and place for that sort of thing; we call it parody. Right now, I have been casually playing Agents of Mayhem by Volition, which is a spinoff of the Saints Row series that focuses on a band of gun-toting superheroes. It is full of this sort of humour, and it works because the whole thing is set up to be a parody of a particular genre. You go in expecting that sort of thing, and it delivers. You have to be in the right mood for it, but it is not throwing any particular curveballs.

Hell, it doesn't even have to be parody. I still enjoy Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, even though series creator Joss Whedon apparently turned out to be a bit of a dildo, to say the least. People who complain about the dialogue in modern Marvel movies often accuse them of being full of "Whedonisms", and that may be a fair point, given his involvement in several of them — but in the context of Buffy and Angel, again, this sort of humour worked, because it was a bunch of kids saying it, and in turn that made it highly quotable in the playground.

Star Trek: Lower Decks is another great example. I thought I was going to hate this series after the first episode, which was pretty "wacky", but I kept watching out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised to discover a series with a lot of genuine heart, soul and sincerity — plus an appreciation of and admiration for Trek canon. Sure, it had its silly moments — a lot more than in most of the live-action shows — but it struck a good balance, and at no point did it feel like it was designed primarily to mock its source material maliciously.

But, like, Golden Axe? This is a beloved arcade game that, in its original form, played things reasonably straight for the most part, at least until its ending sequence. Sure, it had its silly elements like the treasure goblins and the weird mount creatures, but it's clear what the intent was: make a game designed in the style of pulp fantasy, complete with loincloth-clad barbarians, bikini-clad female warriors and hairy dwarves.

When you adapt something like this in the obnoxiously referential, wise-cracking "adult animation" style popularised by shows like Family Guy, you just put across the feeling that you don't respect the source material at all; there seems to be an unspoken assumption that if the creators of this show took Golden Axe seriously, then no-one, in turn, would take this animated series seriously.

You could make the argument that Golden Axe, as a franchise, didn't really have much meat on the bones in terms of narrative in the first place, and you'd probably be right about that. But there's more than enough there to act as a basis for something more — and perhaps to build something genuinely interesting which uses the lore that does exist as a starting point. That could have been cool! There aren't that many good fantasy-themed shows out right now other than Game of Thrones and its spinoff, House of the Dragon, and those are very much an acquired taste (not to mention the poster children for "dark fantasy", which is distinct from more traditional approaches to fantasy) — and there's definitely scope for one in the animated space. Remember stuff like Xena: Warrior Princess? Golden Axe could have been a new Xena: Warrior Princess, but animated!

But no. Instead we get a show that just feels like everyone involved with it has complete and utter contempt for the fantasy genre, for the source material, and for the audience. And I don't really know why! It's not as if animated adaptations which take potentially rather silly source material seriously don't exist — look at Castlevania! That turned out great! It managed to tell a compelling, serious, earnest story with interesting characters and even incorporate some humour without it all feeling forced and filled with such a sense of not giving a shit.

I guess ultimately it's no real skin off my nose, because with Golden Axe being on Paramount+, I'm not going to watch it — and I'm certainly not going to make an effort to seek out some alternative means of watching it (be that official or "unofficial"), based on that trailer. It's just frustrating that this sort of thing is so very predictable; it makes it difficult to have any excitement for announcements of potentially interesting adaptations of video game properties into other forms of media, and very easy to be cynical.

I can't say I was particularly hungry for an animated adaptation of Golden Axe generally — and thus, honestly, I'd rather they hadn't bothered at all than come out with this predictable nonsense.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 804: More like Golden Shower appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Being someone who is "into" classic home computers — and particularly less popular classic home computers like the Atari 8-bit line — I have plenty of possible answers to this challenge, and even more that stem from my modern tastes of games that are a bit off the beaten track and often ignored by the mainstream press. So what to pick?

Well, I think it has to be a home computer game, as I saw yet another example of people who have probably never even seen an Amiga making jokes about European computer games earlier, and it annoyed me. It annoyed me enough to want to write about a home computer game that is genuinely good, but which doesn't get talked about that much.

I eventually settled on Jupiter's Masterdrive, a 1991 game for Atari ST and Amiga that was developed by "POF Corporation" (who, to my knowledge, never made anything else under that name) and published by a very early incarnation of Ubisoft, back when they spelled it "Ubi Soft". If you want to see it in action, I played it on my YouTube channel five years ago:

Although I have shelves filled to the brim with Atari ST games up in my study, Jupiter's Masterdrive is actually a game that I have never owned a full boxed copy of. My sole encounter with it Back In The Day was on a cover-mounted disk from ST Action, a magazine I used to enjoy, and this was, as you might expect, only a playable demo.

I remember finding it quite striking when I played that demo, though — even though it was obviously unfinished. (If I am remembering correctly, the demo had no sound whatsoever!) It was a top-down racer, but with an unusual sci-fi theme: not only were you racing on moons, other planets and satellites, you also had access to weaponry with which to upset your opponents. Races were as much about survival as they were about coming out in front.

The game moved smoothly, which was never a given on the ST, which lacked the hardware scrolling facilities of its great rival, the Amiga. The play area was deliberately constrained to a relatively small window on the screen, presumably to keep the frame rate up a bit — but it was also possible to play the whole thing in a split-screen two-player mode, and to my recollection, performance didn't really suffer when doing so. My experience with the game — particularly the full version I played in the video above — was almost exclusively with the single-player mode, but I suspect I would have at least tried the two-player mode with a school friend once or twice.

Demo disks of the era were great for this sort of thing. Despite the fact the demos in question had to be squeezed onto a single floppy disk — and often a single side of a floppy disk in order to cater to those who only had a single-sided drive, with bonus demos on offer for those lucky enough to have a double-sided setup — they were often quite generous in terms of how much they would let you play; certainly enough to give you a good idea of what to expect from the finished product, and often a lot of fun in their own right.

In the case of Jupiter's Masterdrive, that playable demo with no sound lodged itself firmly in some dust-covered recess in the corner of my mind for years — no, decades — after I originally played it, so when I was doing my Atari ST A to Z video series and got to "J" one time, the memory leapt out and bellowed "Jupiter's Masterdrive!" at me. "Oh yeah," I thought. "I liked that demo. I wonder what the full game is like?"

Really good, as it happens. The additional time that POF Corporation worked on the game between the release of the demo and the final game coming out over a year later was evidently well-spent, as the result was a well-crafted, polished, slick game that ran extremely well, even on the humble ST, and was a lot of fun to play.

It had some fun and interesting twists, too. From the demo, I had assumed the whole game would be circuit-based racing, but the full version also shakes things up with some arena-based events in which your aim is to collect a certain number of special objects before an opponent. The small play area isn't a hindrance in these events, either, thanks to a well-implemented radar display that allows you to see at a glance where you, your opponent and the target objects are.

Between races, you can spend the credits you earn and win on various upgrades for your car, including enhancements to your car's performance as well as weaponry and armour to help you survive a bit longer in the tougher events.

It's a game I don't think I have seen anyone else ever talk about online, but for one reason or another it's one that, as I say, got into my mind as a youngster and never really went away. I was really pleased to discover (when I finally tried it) that the full game ended up being as good as it is — and encourage you to give it a look, particularly if you've ever said anything disparaging about home computer games.

This is a quality title that holds up very well indeed, and is a great example of why there's a ton of value in exploring this area of gaming history rather than just laughing at those silly Europeans for "making do" with their stupid old STs and Amigas back in the '80s and '90s. We had a perfectly fulfilling, satisfying time, I think you'll find, as games up to the standard of Jupiter's Masterdrive were by no means an uncommon sight — and if you take the time to explore a bit, you'll find some wonderful games that deserve to be talked about a whole lot more.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 803: Write about an obscure game appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Ys is not the only series I am very behind on, of course. I am also very behind on Yakuza, which is at least partly why I started Yakuza 6 on a whim the other day. Technically I'm not "behind" on Suikoden because I never started it prior to this — though I am enjoying it a lot — but I do want to play, at the very least, the first two in the HD Remaster collection.

Then, of course, there is Trails, that which has apparently become Falcom's flagship series. To date, I have played the first Trails in the Sky… twice. I also made a start on Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, but almost immediately after I started playing that game, Falcom announced the remake of the first Trails in the Sky (and its subsequent follow-up), so I figured that I would delay starting a proper, honest to goodness attempt to "do" that series until all of these remakes were out. And in the meantime, the far end of the series continues to extend further and further into the distance; I am several games behind in terms of actually buying the games at this point, so hopefully by the time I do actually start playing Trails properly, they will still be reasonably available.

Does it all matter? No, of course not. So long as these games continue to be available and the hardware to play them on remains in working order, I can play them at any time. That said, I do feel considerably more "pressure" of sorts to play current stuff sooner rather than later, given how many of them have downloadable updates. I do tend to make a habit of primarily purchasing limited-print stuff, which tends to be fully up to date on cart or disc, but in the case of stuff that gets a broader retail release — like the Trails games now do — there are often updates of varying degrees of necessity from the moment you put the disc in.

And don't even get me started on Game Key Cards, still officially the worst thing about Nintendo Switch 2.

Anyway, at some point, then, I think I will probably be jumping into Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. I did actually make a start on this ages ago, during a time when we had some friends over, they got a bit drunk and wanted to see some sort of RPG. I haven't touched it for ages, though, so if and when I do start again, it will be going from the beginning once more. I'm also quite tempted to revisit Ys Origin, purely for its finale music. And then there's the Switch versions of Oath in Felghana and Memories in Celceta, both of which I've played, but which it would be fun to have another look at.

And then after that there's Ys IX and Ys X to play, too. Ahh, an embarrassment of riches, truly. And yet how long do you think I'm going to stare at a wall, wondering if I really should start something new when I already have two big games on the go?

No. Fuck it. You know what, I'm just going to do it. I need some howling Falcom guitars in my life right now, and I'm damn well going to go and get them. You see if I don't!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 801: Eeeeeeees appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

In no particular order…

First up, here's my writeup on Lapis x Labyrinth, a thoroughly unusual game from Nippon Ichi that blends elements of platformer, action RPG, arena combat game, shoot 'em up and pachinko. (Don't worry, there's no actual gambling or microtransactions.) It's an incredibly compulsive game that knows how very appealing it is when you do something in a game and things explode into a shower of shiny things. Narrative-wise it's almost completely forgettable, but in terms of presentation and particularly gameplay, it's a wonderful thing indeed, and highly recommended if you want to play something quite unlike anything else you have experienced.

Next up, here's a look at Root Letter, a visual novel/adventure game hybrid that I once described as "Ace Attorney for the over-30s", and very much stand by that description. It's a thoroughly compelling mystery story with some spooky elements, and does a great job at juxtaposing the energy and optimism of youth with the glum reality of early middle age. I still have not yet played the expanded version of this which adds the option to replace the hand-drawn artwork with photographic stills; I think probably enough time has elapsed between me playing the original version and now that I can (and should!) give it a go, given that it's on my shelf, and has been for quite some time.

Dragon Quest V is not what I'd exactly call an "unknown" game, but this piece which I wrote on the game's treatment of fatherhood — specifically, as experienced by a child, and how I related it to my own life experiences and memories of family life as a child — remains something that I'm very pleased with. I was emotionally invested in the subject matter, and I think that came across in what I wrote. I'm sure the things I describe will be familiar to at least some of you.

Here's a piece on Criminal Girls, a thoroughly interesting — and oft-misrepresented — role-playing game in which you take on the role of a jailer in Hell, tasked with leading a group of "delinquent" girls on the path to getting a second chance at life and a chance of "redemption" from their "sins". The game explores matters of trust both in its narrative and, quite remarkably, through its mechanics, making it a thoroughly interesting example of how a game's thematic elements are woven throughout the entire fabric of the game rather than simply used as set dressing.

Here's a piece on Namco's Star Ixiom, a game from the company's PlayStation era that never, ever gets talked about — but which is actually really, really good! It's the follow-up to the company's Famicom Star Raiders-like, Star Luster, and is absolutely packed with both depth and a variety of things to do, with multiple ways to play according to whether you prefer a linear, mission-based structure or a more freeform, strategic game. Vastly underappreciated game that I'm bummed I never even heard of back when the PS1 was current — but thankfully, I can enjoy at my leisure today.

Finally, let's close off today with a look at SWERY's The Good Life, a game from this unusual and widely beloved creator's back catalogue that, once again, I never see anyone talking about. It is a thoroughly interesting game that combines elements of cosy life sim, murder mystery and open world adventure, allows you to turn into both a dog and a cat, and you can also ride sheep. It is somehow less "wacky" than it sounds, and has some real heart and soul to it — as well as a thoroughly convincing interpretation of the Lake District landscape to explore.

There are many other games I've covered on MoeGamer to date, so if you want more than the above links, stop by the All Games page on MoeGamer and check out an index of every game I've covered to one degree or another. Or you can hit up the article index (also available organised by date) and browse that way instead, if you prefer. Either way, if you've never paid MoeGamer a visit and you like the things I write about games, stop by and have a look around! It's my favourite thing that I've created on the Internet, and I intend to keep it standing for many years to come, so please enjoy what I've put there to date.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 800: Some interesting games I've covered appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Much has been written by people much smarter than me about how the "cosy" and "wholesome" spaces are actually not all that wholesome at all — and in fact can harbour some of the truly most odious, harmful outlooks on life it's possible to have. Fairly high on this list is the complete unwillingness to be challenged by fiction in any way whatsoever — and I don't even mean "avoids material with complicated and difficult themes that even the most strong-stomached would find uncomfortable"; I mean absolutely completely and utterly unwilling to deal with something perfectly normal on the grounds that it isn't "wholesome" by the exceedingly narrow definition they have inscribed inside their own head.

Here's the post that kicked off the whole discussion today. It apparently hails from a mod for the recently full-released Fields of Mistria that makes a character "SFW" (safe for work).

To be clear: Fields of Mistria is not a porn game. It is not even an ecchi game — one with mild lewdity that stops short of full-on, explicit nudity or sexual content. These are some characters from Fields of Mistria:

And this is the specific character the commenter above is getting upset about:

Busty? Moderately, but not excessively so. Provocatively dressed? Mildly, but I think we can infer from her facial expression, pose and general demeanour that this is a character that is supposed to be sexy — and moreover, one who is very comfortable with that. This is emphatically not the same as her sprites being "sexual". I know nothing about Fields of Mistria but I can immediately infer the intent behind this character just from looking at these three sprites. And, indeed, her official description backs up pretty much everything I suspected about her — and none of it involves her sexual proclivities:

Juniper is a mysterious sorceress drawn to Mistria when she learns that magical mists and monsters of legend have begun appearing in the area after the recent earthquake. She then starts up a bath house. The bath house is largely a cover for testing her newly empowered potions and spells on the player and other unsuspecting townsfolk, usually resulting in buffs (and occasionally funny accidents)

The crucial thing though? This is not porn. This is not even ecchi levels of provocativeness. (Not that there is anything wrong with either of those things in an appropriate context, anyway!)

This is a character in a fantasy game, dressed in a style that fits with the personality and aesthetic the writers decided that she should have, in the context of the fantasy world. There is nothing offensive about this character unless you specifically choose to make it offensive.

And that is precisely what the commenter above has chosen to do. Not only that — and this really pisses me off — but they have chosen to weaponise autism as their justification for this.

No! You do not get to do that! I am autistic and fuckin' love titties! Your autism has nothing to do with you feeling "uncomfortable about her sprites". And, furthermore, it is the height of fucking disrespect to an artist (and the writers behind that character) to request that a third party deface their artwork so you don't have to confront your inability to process a non-sexual image of a female character that happens to dress in a way that shows a bit of skin.

Go outside! There are people who dress like this! (Maybe not the last one, unless it's a special occasion.) There are people whose bodies look like this! If you go to a swimming pool or beach — shock, horror! — you may even see someone dressed like the image in the middle! If your brain's first response to seeing someone dressed like any of the women above — but particularly the ones with visible cleavage, who may or may not have above-average sized breasts — is to immediately start shouting "I AM THINKING ABOUT SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH YOU" and emitting the "awooga" sound from old Tex Avery cartoons via some unknown part of your body, you have a problem!

And, I hate to break this to you, but it is not autism. It is, at its core, an unwillingness to see a woman as anything other than a sexual object for your own potential gratification. You can try and make yourself out to be "wholesome" by very publicly shouting and screaming about how you don't approve of this and how it makes you so uncomfortable and how this lascivious temptation must be removed from your sight, lest you know not what you might do… but in reality you simply have a problem with a woman dressing the way she wants to dress, expressing herself the way she wants to express herself, and, highly likely, not having sex with you.

I will close with a quote on the matter from the Japanese translator, Thomas James:

Shit like this is why I give wholesome games as a movement a constant stink-eye because what that audience often wants isn't relaxed, low stakes fare. They want content with zero intellectual calories that won't challenge them for being emotionally stunted. What a miserably boring way to consume art.

Quite.

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The post #oneaday Day 795: Titties - deal with them appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

On my walks on the Common, I have been rediscovering some of the playlists I made many years ago, and I thought today I would share some of my favourite motivational tracks with you. I highly recommend adding these to an exercise playlist if you're struggling with motivation!

Bein' Friends (Super Smash Bros./Earthbound Beginnings)

I wouldn't say I'm the biggest fan of Super Smash Bros. — though I did make an honest attempt to get into it with Ultimate — but I do absolutely love this theme from the "Onett" stage. It's a good one to kick off a workout with because it combines drama, whimsy and triumph into a delightful tune that always makes me smile.

The Elite (Split/Second)

Here's another great one to kick off a workout with, because the beginning just builds anticipation — a fine accompaniment to a warmup, or just as you're getting into the swing of things. Then the main part of the track kicks in and you're ready to explode into action. And possibly have a near-uncontrollable hankering to play Split/Second again. Man, that game was good — and criminally mishandled in the marketplace.

Perfection! Space Elementary School Band! (Space Channel 5 Part 2)

Man, I could pick any number of tracks from both Space Channel 5 games to put in here, but I'll try and restrain myself… a bit. Anyway, this track demonstrates one of the things I love about the soundtrack as a whole: the way that each section starts in a familiar way before branching off into something completely different and sometimes unexpected. I love the high tempo of this one — it's a favourite part of the game, and recalling my enjoyment of the sequence that this track accompanies is a powerful motivating factor, for sure.

Riders of the Light (Bayonetta)

Fly Me To The Moon is, understandably, the Bayonetta theme that gets all the attention, but I always thought this theme was just… better, generally. I know I certainly got absolutely hyped up any time a battle was accompanied by it — and it works great for motivational music, too. My favourite bit is that piano-heavy bit after the initial section. Such delicious chord sequences.

Be The One (Trauma Team)

Finale music is, as you might expect, absolutely great for motivation. This one, from the beginning of the buildup to the grand finale of Atlus' incredible game, Trauma Team, is a good example. We're not taking things too over the top, but we are making it feel like we should be taking whatever we are doing seriously. It doesn't matter if you're out for a walk in the park, putting up shelves or cutting into living flesh (with the flesh owner's consent, of course) — this is music to get you In The Mood to… well, Be The One.

Sins of the Father (Beyond Good and Evil)

Man, what a great game Beyond Good and Evil was. We're never, ever going to see that sequel. But that doesn't matter, because you can put this banging track on when you're doing exercise and you'll feel like you can do anything! Particularly during the bit with the dramatic buildup and the creepy chanting. This track has a few good sections that feels like they're good for "exploding" into action. You'll know them when you hear them.

A Toccata into Blood-Soaked Darkness (Castlevania: Curse of Darkness)

Hitting a wall? What you need is Castlevania! The combination of overdramatic orchestra and Gothic-infused rock and electronic rhythms has always got me fired up, and this particular track is a personal favourite of mine — even though it hails from one of the Castlevania games that I haven't actually played. (PAL copies of this one are pricy today.)

Got all that? Should get you through an evening's workout. And if it doesn't, blast out One-Winged Angel to finish off your session. That'll sort you right out.

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The post #oneaday Day 794: Motivational music appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Prior to USgamer's closure in 2020, I backed up most of my articles that I could find and/or remember. I saved them as local copies on my computer, with the intention of gradually republishing at least some of them on MoeGamer — a process I started but still need to get back to. (Some of these articles found their way over to VG247, but they're buried in an archive and not exactly what I'd call "easily accessible" today, so I have absolutely no qualms in taking these pieces and republishing them myself.)

Anyway, after my enforced reinstall of Windows a little while ago, it suddenly occurred to me that I might have lost these locally saved archives. Thankfully, I had apparently had the foresight to back them up to my Google Drive (I know I should get off Google, I know) and thus I was able to recover them. After extracting them to my Documents folder, I thought I'd have a browse through a few to remind myself of what I'd written back then.

The first one I attempted to open — a review of Imageepoch's Time and Eternity, a game which I liked but none of the rest of the Internet did — opened for a split-second before automatically redirecting to some website I'd never heard of: "spl.zeotap.com", which is apparently an "AI-powered Customer Data Platform that helps enterprises unlock the true value of their customer data". Of course it's a fucking AI thing now — though I don't know what it was back in 2020 when I archived these pages. Whatever it was, it is broken, because every time I open certain articles from my locally saved archive, they immediately redirect to part of "ZeoTap"'s website that no longer exists, with no way of telling the browser to go "Back" and just look at the fucking page I was trying to look at in the first place.

Thankfully, this isn't the case for everything in the archive — and I've determined that you can tell which ones will fail by the file size of the main article HTML file — and I also found a workaround using Firefox's Developer Tools. Unfortunately it's not a workaround I can just apply globally; I have to do it every time I open one of these bastard articles. So for the sake of my future self, I'm going to recount the process here, just in case:

• Open a new tab
• Open the Developer Tools console
• Go to the Network tab of Developer Tools
• Drag the problematic HTML file into the browser window
• Scroll through the stuff in the Network tab that appears until you find the problematic ZeoTap URL request
• Right click on it and choose "Block URL"
• Drag the HTML file into the browser window again
• The article should now appear, and you can close Developer Tools to read it
• You have to repeat this process each time you open a new tab or browser window

This is fucking annoying though, isn't it? I would have thought that the entire point of saving a web page locally would be so that you could, you know, look at it locally without having to be online — or, indeed, dependent on URLs that no longer resolve correctly. But apparently at some point in USgamer's history, certain pages on its site became so dependent on whatever the fuck this ZeoTap thing is that it became impossible to just look at the damned pages. And that dependency is somehow maintained when you save the page for offline viewing.

Well, you might think, surely it's just a matter of looking at the page source, searching for that troublesome URL and removing the bit of the HTML file that references it? You'd think, wouldn't you?! But there are so many fucking Javascript files, so many CSS files, so many external HTML files that are loaded when just looking at one sodding page, which, I'll remind you, is saved locally, that it's impossible to track down which one of these myriad dependencies is causing the problem!

I remember a while back, someone posted on Bluesky that they looked at a page on somewhere like PC Gamer, and before the article had appeared the browser had downloaded something like 20MB of… stuff to their computer. I think back to the good old, bad old days of dial-up, when downloading a single megabyte of anything took upwards of an hour at the best of times, and wonder exactly how we let the Web become such an unwieldy mess.

(Ads and tracking is the answer, of course. But you knew that.)

Anyway, thankfully I have at least found a workaround that appears to work for the articles that are affected, so I guess I will prioritise getting those pieces onto MoeGamer sooner rather than later!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 793: The Web is so broken even offline copies of pages are fucked up appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This is a small thing and some might argue "beating three video games" as not being something particularly worth crowing about, but I am seeing this as a victory for several reasons.

Firstly, it's something I've been "meaning to get around to" for literally years at this point, and have never just, y'know, made the time to do it. But with my lovely MiSTer Multisystem setup on my childhood CRT, it felt like the right time to give these games the time and attention they deserve. Because they're all really, really good! Even with Illusion of Time's absolutely dogshit English translation!

Secondly, one of the reasons I've been putting it off for so long is because I knew I wanted to write about each of these games as I played them, and I wanted to do each of them justice while I did so. Now I've written an article about each of them (with the exception of The Granstream Saga and Actraiser, which I will… contemplate doing in the near future) of about 3-4,000 words each, I am satisfied. I think I have done them justice. And I am glad I have finally taken the time to experience something that I was inadvertently keeping just out of arm's reach by myself. There was nothing stopping me playing these games at any time. I just didn't.

I suppose you can look on it as a sort of mental health issue. When you build something up in your brain to be somehow "important", it can start to seem further and further out of reach — particularly if, in your life generally, you are also pursuing far-off goals that will take a long time to accomplish. As such, you start thinking that you'll never get around to The Thing, because it has taken on such a scary amount of "importance" in your brain that you subconsciously start avoiding it so you don't have to face it directly.

I'm aware that this sounds stupid! We're talking about some video games that are commonly agreed to be very good, so why should I find myself not wanting to "face them"?

Well, that's the thing about mental health. It doesn't always make sense. It doesn't always make you behave rationally, or see things for what they really are. And that's why, at times like this, you need to celebrate the victories that you have achieved. Because if you can achieve victory over something that seemed like it was far off, but was actually relatively straightforward to accomplish when you get down to it, you can also achieve victory over those longer-term goals, as your brain has been treating them in almost the exact same way.

Since, as I've said, I have a bunch of my own long-term goals to accomplish — primarily with regard to my health, fitness and weight — thinking about things in these terms is immensely valuable. You wouldn't think that completing a 30 year old SNES game would provide motivation to better your life in general, would you? But that's what I'm feeling right now, and I'm not sure I've explained it 100% effectively. Regardless, that is what I'm feeling right now — and I'm going to do my best to ride that wave of motivation as far as I can.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 792: A goal, complete appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Yes, I know we have some Big Names lined up for the rest of the year, one of which everyone already knows about (The Banjo-Kazooie Double Pack, which is releasing alongside Evercade Nexus in October) and another of which is pretty bloody obvious if you've been paying any sort of attention, even though it hasn't officially been announced as yet. And don't get me wrong, both of those carts are great. I am proud of the immense amount of work we put into them, and I think people are going to have some thoroughly pleasant surprises with them besides just rediscovering some old favourites. (There are also two more carts we haven't talked about at all yet, which are also going to be a fun time.)

But Visco Arcade 1 and 2? These carts reflect one of the main reasons I, personally, got into Evercade in the first place: the celebration and enjoyment of weird and wonderful stuff that I've never heard of before, and which has never seen official rereleases for one reason or another. (That's not quite true in the case of the Visco games, in that current rights holder PixelHeart sells NEOGEO cartridges, but the ability to enjoy those is dependent on you owning a working NEOGEO, which is… not something a lot of people have just lying around… although it will be interesting to see what effect, if any, the upcoming NEOGEO AES+ has on the market. But I digress.)

Anyway, yes. Visco Arcade 1 and 2 are both jam-packed full of games I'd mostly never heard of prior to working on the cartridges, and which are now titles I find myself playing and enjoying quite a lot. I'd previously come across the shoot 'em up Andro Dunos and the fighting game Breaker's (although we all learned recently about the apostrophe in the name, which is seemingly not common knowledge despite it being right there in the logo) and I also knew the Drift Out series by reputation (if only because everyone always mistakes Gaelco's excellent World Rally series, which is on Evercade too, for Neo Drift Out) but the others? Brand new to me.

Helicopter shoot 'em up action in Ashura Blaster! Time-travelling jet fighter shoot 'em up fun in Asuka & Asuka! Triple weapon space blasting in Galmedes! Driving a definitely-not-Volkswagen Beetle around mazes and hunting for treasure in Maze of Flott! Hacking and slashing Sengoku-style in Ganryu! Delightful, one and all.

Two of my favourite discoveries are Battle Flip Shot and Bang Bead, two games that are effectively evolutions of Pong, in which you control colourful anime-style characters and try to knock down targets behind your opponent. I partly like these because they're just simple, fun, well-presented arcade games — and I suspect they'd be great with a friend — but I mostly like them because they remind me of a Klik and Play project my friend Edd made once, which he dubbed Impact!

Impact! was a game in which two of the default, included sprites from Klik and Play — "Merlin" and "Street Puncher" — faced off against one another on a top-down representation of a tennis court. They then proceeded to knock an energy ball back and forth, each attempting to hit the item of fast food behind their rival in order to either score points or deplete the opponent's energy bar, I forget which. I believe Street Puncher guarded a hamburger, while Merlin guarded a pizza, though it may have been the other way around. There were lots of burping and farting noises, and it was an endearingly stupid, completely unbalanced but enormously fun way to while away an afternoon with a friend.

I couldn't stop myself from laughing when I booted up Battle Flip Shot for the first time and realised what the game was. "This is just Impact!" I said to myself, realising that there was absolutely no-one around who would have any idea whatsoever what I was talking about. That made me a bit sad, but mostly I smiled at the good memories, and consequently both Battle Flip Shot and its fairly similar (but notably different) successor Bang Bead suddenly became quite special to me, despite me only learning about them relatively recently.

In fact, if I think about the dates we were most likely fiddling with Klik and Play — between 1997 and 1999, during our time at sixth form, primarily — it's entirely possible that Impact! did, in fact, predate Battle Flip Shot, which came out in 1998. And certainly none of us were playing NEOGEO at that time; around then, the NEOGEO was a mythical beast, spoken of only in hushed tones in multiformat games magazines, and we didn't have any arcades anywhere near us to go play an MVS cabinet, either. So Edd's creation was all original do not steal.

I have idle thoughts of trying to get The Old Gang back together for some sort of Event that will likely involve drinking, cake and video games. I am also not entirely sure how to go about organising such a thing, as there are several members of said Old Gang I have not spoken to, let alone seen, for many years at this point. But that is, at least partly, why I think it would be fun to get everyone together and have a drunken Battle Flip Shot tournament. And see how long it takes Edd to notice that we're really just playing Impact! – Pro-Gear Spec Edition.

[Obligatory note, since I am talking about Work Stuff: the above is my opinion and my opinion alone, and does not reflect or represent the views of my employer and all that guff.]

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 788: Visco does what Nintencon't... or something appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm not sure I agree with (or entirely understand) the piece's core thesis, but I am particularly conscious of the subject today, as there have been a number of glowing reviews dropping for Big Walk, the new game from House House, the company previously known for Untitled Goose Game. I have reached a point where I am immediately suspicious when all the particularly online critics on Bluesky are all over a new indie game, because the last time that happened was Blue Prince, and I fucking hate Blue Prince. But I'm also aware that Big Walk, as good as it might actually be, is fundamentally inaccessible to me.

You see, I don't really have anyone that I might have been able to enjoy that game with right now. Oh sure, I have people that I know and like online, but I don't know any of them that might be interested in playing a game that, for one reason or another, appears to be getting nudged slowly but surely towards the bin marked "Friendslop (complimentary)".

And folks that I would have previously regarded as my "IRL" friends, with whom I have enjoyed online multiplayer shenanigans of various descriptions? I haven't heard from any of them in over a year, after they severely upset me around my birthday last year.

Thus, I am mostly alone, so far as gaming is concerned. And this is frustrating, because although I have always found social interactions to be a tad challenging in various ways — which I learned late into my adult life is at least partly because of my existence on the autistic spectrum, and is the main reason I don't play with strangers — for many years, gaming was something that, while I often enjoyed as a solitary pursuit, I absolutely loved sharing with others just as much. Many of my absolute fondest gaming memories are about times spent playing together — and not necessarily in a "multiplayer" context, either! Let me try and think of a few.

Those days in school, where you had made a new friend and you plucked up the courage to ask your parents to let you go to their house. Fond memories of visiting my friend Edd and playing on his Amiga, and of him coming to my house and playing on my ST, SNES and, later, the PC. That time we played Flashback and had trouble with the big gooey boss thing on one of the last levels and ended up singing "The membrane, the membrane, the membrane is dead!" over and over after we finally beat it.

Those days in sixth form that felt like they'd never end — but sadly did — where we'd wander into town, grab some lunch from the local bakery, visit the local computer shop and buy a new game for PlayStation or N64, then all pile around someone's house to play it for hours. The time we played Mario Kart 64 and wrote down all the obscenities we hurled at one another for a feature in the sixth form magazine we produced. The time when none of us were really all that into football, but we played the World Cup 98 N64 game anyway, because it was fun. The many recording sessions we had to produce "voice acting" for our Klik and Play games, and the out-takes that made us laugh until we thought we'd piss ourselves. The time we introduced our head of sixth form to the one and only Klik and Play game we finished, where he was the main villain.

Those days in university, where after lectures were done, we'd pile around someone's house and play split-screen GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Diddy Kong Racing and Mario Kart 64 for hours. The advent of the PlayStation 2, and how an experience as new and fresh as Grand Theft Auto III was something we could enjoy together, even though it was a single-player game. The time my friends brought a copy of Silent Hill 2 with them and I finished it in a single evening while they passed out, hammered and full of curry, in my living room, only to wake up and see the credits rolling.

Those days when I lived in an amazing flat in Winchester, and I had a bunch of friends over, we all got absolutely munted and took off our shirts to play LAN party Halo for some reason. When my housemate came back to find a living room full of half-naked men, she decided it was to be called "Gaylo" from then onwards.

And what I once thought were the incredibly enjoyable "Davison Cup" tournaments I hosted for my birthday celebrations for several years, which provided not only a rare opportunity to play games together with friends in the same room for once, but also a chance to introduce them to things they might not have experienced before — things that were important to me, personally. These memories in particular are somewhat bittersweet now.

I miss being able to share these experiences. It's not one single thing that has left me feeling so lonely and friendless; it is a veritable mountain of causes — some external, some internal, some self-inflicted, some caused by others, some caused by the general direction society (and the way in which we interact with one another) has moved in the last 30 years. All I really know is that I don't like it — and part of the reason I continue to write about the things I love and the things that are important to me, both here and on MoeGamer, is in the vain hope that it might provide even a hint of those personal connections I used to enjoy and appreciate on a daily basis.

It all feels a long time ago now, and I'm very tired, and I'm hurt. I don't even really want to play Big Walk all that much. It'd just be nice to feel like I had the option.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 787: Friendfreeslop appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

As I'm typing this, it's lunchtime, and this makes me think about what games are suitable for lunch break play. Really, you can play anything over your lunch — and indeed I have done in the past — but there are certain types of games that are eminently more suitable than others.

Long RPGs, for example, are probably not optimal for lunch break play — unless they're designed with a sort of "bite-sized" structure. Good examples of this that I've enjoyed in the past include the Neptunia series, which has small dungeons you can delve into, beat up some enemies, get some crafting materials and maybe complete some quests, and be done in less than an hour. The inverse of this is the grid-based dungeon crawler, where you really need to sit down and concentrate on what you're doing, lest you completely lose the thread of your explorations.

I found Splatoon Raiders to be an ideal lunch break game, because each of its stages are no more than about five minutes, tops. That means you can dip in and play a good few levels in just a short space of time, and feel like you've had a worthwhile experience. Recommended.

Driving games can also be good for this — in fact, after I'm done here, I might just boot up Forza Horizon and drive around a bit. Again, the bite-sized nature of most events in driving games make them eminently suitable for short sessions, such as playing over lunch.

Then, of course, there are arcade games, which are the very definition of this sort of thing. Arcade machines were designed for you to pass by, think "ooh, that looks fun, I'll have a quick go" and while away a few minutes. In most cases, the games are challenging enough, or designed with a built-in maximum play time, that you can enjoy one game multiple times during a short break — or you can sample multiple for a varied bit of fun.

This is why handhelds used to be brilliant to take to the office pre-COVID. Back in those Before Times, I had an office job that was about a 15 minute drive away, so in theory I could come back home and play something at home — indeed, on several occasions I even managed to get a full YouTube video recorded over lunch, which I'm not sure how I achieved in retrospect — but it was much more practical to pop the Vita or 3DS in my bag, stick on my headphones and just blot everything out while I sat on the sofa near the coffee machine, eating sandwiches and playing Neptunia.

I kind of miss that! I mean, I don't miss having to go out to work every day, but having a reason for handhelds to exist was fun. These days, of course, it would probably be the Switch 2 and/or the Evercade EXP-R coming out with me, and both of those are amply stocked with plenty of good "lunchtime games".

But now I work from home, I have a lot more choice. That can sometimes be overwhelming, but it's also nice. It means I can enjoy a wide variety of different things over my lunch break, and then easily get back to work at a suitable stopping point.

So that's what I'm going to go and do right now…

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The post #oneaday Day 786: Lunchtime games appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

My first — and, prior to last night, last — encounter with Forza Horizon was with Forza Horizon 4, which I had extremely mixed feelings about. Sure, it was cool to have an open-world driving game set somewhere that looked and felt a bit like the UK, but the way it was structured to have all the hard edges completely smoothed off, lest some player somewhere felt any "friction", made the whole thing feel utterly meaningless. We're talking about a game where you can come last in every event you enter and still make progress. Not what I'm looking for in a driving game, so after getting frustrated with that, I pretty much swore off the subsequent entries in the series.

However, I was aware that earlier entries in the series were very well-regarded, and in the absence of owning an Xbox One or Series Whateverthefuck, the only one accessible to me was the first one for Xbox 360. This has apparently been delisted from everywhere for some time now, but you can still get second-hand physical copies, and indeed, that's what I did on a trip to CEX some time ago.

I booted it up last night for the first time and found it quite enjoyable. However, one thing became increasingly apparent the longer I played: the fact it, plus all its DLC and microtransactions, had been delisted from sale made it well and truly "dead" — to such a degree that there are certain functions in the game you just flat-out can't access any more, despite the menu options still being there.

This is apparent right from the game's title screen, where you have the option to play "Horizon Rally"… except you don't, because you need the Horizon Rally DLC for that, and you can't get that any more, leaving you with a completely useless menu option, plus a number of loading screen tips informing you that you can buy it from the Xbox Marketplace… which, as previously noted, you cannot.

I thought I was going to have a real problem when I opened the map screen and there were button prompts for "Treasure Map" and "Fast Travel Anywhere". Now, you see a button prompt in a game, and it's reasonable to think that it's a built-in function of the game, right? You press the button indicated, and the thing happens. That's how it usually works, right? Not in Forza Horizon land. Pressing either of these buttons gives you a pop-up informing you that you can buy those two pieces of functionality — which, respectively, allow you to immediately teleport anywhere on the map, and reveal the location of hidden items on the map — using "Tokens", which you can, of course, get from the Xbox Marketplace. Except you can't do that because everything about Forza Horizon has been delisted.

I was concerned in the former case that this meant the entire fast travel feature would be unusable because you couldn't buy a fucking microtransaction any more, but thankfully progressing a little further revealed that there is still a built-in fast travel facility — it's just a bit more inconvenient, since you can only fast travel to specific landmarks that you've previously visited and not, like, the various race events that appear across the map. I wasn't so concerned about the treasure map, meanwhile, since all it is, basically, is a cheat code that you have to pay for.

Little remnants of Forza Horizon really, really wanting you to pay up for microtransactions that no longer exist are riddled throughout the entire game. At least one load screen tip for every loading break will have some sort of exhortation to buy something. Those broken Fast Travel Anywhere and Treasure Map buttons don't go away. If you want to buy a new car in the game, you can do so with the credits you earn through gameplay or "Tokens" that you can no longer purchase with real money.

I guess I should be thankful that Forza Horizon is, at least, still playable, even with all its online functionality and purchasable bullshit inaccessible. If anything, I prefer the fact that there's now no means of simply paying money to not play the game, which is what at least some of these options amounted to. You'd just think they'd, you know, turn all that shit off in a patch if they knew it was no longer going to be available. I mean, presumably they added in the "Horizon Rally" option at some point when it was actually available — why not just remove it again in a final update when the servers and DLC went offline?

We're going to start running into this more and more as time goes on, and it's not always going to be optional DLC and microtransactions that are affected. Thankfully, we have not yet reached a point where patch servers are no longer available for console games that require them, but at some point we are going to have to reckon with the fact that a lot of today's physical releases ship either broken or incomplete, and I'm not sure the work has been adequately done to prepare for that time when the "official" patch servers are no longer available.

This, of course, is a big part of what the whole "Stop Killing Games" movement is about — and I know that certain parts of the gaming history and preservation communities are at least starting to have a think about the best way of handling all this. I'm just concerned that it's going to be too late by the time we find a solution; how many more games out there are technically functional, like Forza Horizon, but have elements that are now completely inaccessible?

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The post #oneaday Day 784: Playing a dead game appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I've been feeling this a bit recently, particularly with regard to recent releases. There are exceptions, of course — I've picked up Star Fox, Rhythm Paradise Groove and Splatoon Raiders for Switch 2 over the course of the last month, and when I got home from CEX, I found myself ordering copies of the first four Saints Row games (original versions, not remasters, as I've heard mixed reports about the latter) as well as the newly announced EDITIONS from LostInCult for Sektori, Dread Delusion and Easy Delivery Co. So in actual fact I probably spent a lot more than I would have spent if I'd come out with an armful of 360, PS3 and PS4 games from that CEX.

But I don't know. I just wasn't feeling it in the store today. I had a couple of things in mind that I thought I might like to look out for (notably, the aforementioned Saints Row games, following a discussion with a pal earlier) and those did not appear to be in attendance, and there wasn't much else jumping out at me. I thought about trying to expand and/or complete my collection of Need for Speed games on Xbox 360, but the vaguely responsible part of my brain pointed out that I haven't played the parts of that collection I already own as yet, so it would probably be a little silly to get more. (Actually, it wouldn't have made much difference; they were like £1.50 each; I just couldn't be arsed.)

I don't want to say that I'm falling out of love with gaming, because that very obviously isn't true. But with all the recent, unwelcome moves in the current industry — Microsoft continually stepping on rakes, Sony putting an expiration date on physical media, Nintendo continuing to push Game Key Cards — it's hard not to feel a bit cynical about current things, and that my relationship with the hobby is changing. On top of that, stuff that is a few years old now is still good! Since I'm not someone who has ever got particularly sniffy about resolution and frame rate, I'm pretty sure I'll have just as good a time with those Xbox 360 versions of the Saints Row games as I would have done if I'd picked up the (pricier) PS4 or Switch versions.

I mean, hell, outside of Splatoon Raiders, the other "big game" I'm currently playing is on the SNES. And I'm glad that I have the ability to enjoy this broad range of stuff — ranging from late '70s/early '80s computer and console stuff right up to brand new releases. I know not everyone feels able to do that for one reason or another, and honestly I feel a bit sorry for those people who can't. Perhaps you just had to "be there" for it all to have those positive associations, and if I was 20-30 years younger I might feel differently about games that ran at sub-1080p resolutions and less than 60 frames per second.

But, as it happens, that is not the case, and thus I will continue to enjoy my Old Shit alongside very carefully selected and curated New Shit, and try not to spend too much time mourning an industry that, in its current state, seems determined to self-destruct.

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The post #oneaday Day 782: Slow the rate appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm unsure where this particular anxiety stems from, but it's not an altogether uncommon phenomenon. It seems it is most frequently associated with ADHD, which I have not been formally diagnosed with, but which from talking to people who do have it, I recognise a lot of the things they mention — much like I did with autism before I went and got myself diagnosed. I'm not in any great hurry to get myself diagnosed in that regard, though I suspect, as with the autism diagnosis, that having it confirmed (or otherwise) might help me to think about my own brain in a more helpful way.

But regardless! That doesn't fix the immediate issue, which is my brain is currently doing somersaults wondering what I should actually do today. And it's not as if I have a shortage of options. I could play some Final Fantasy XI, now I am into the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion. I could play some Terranigma, which I started the other day and enjoyed a lot. I could play some Splatoon Raiders, which I am also having fun with. I could record a voiceover for my Illusion of Time video and then edit said video now that I have learned the basics of DaVinci Resolve. I could even record some voiceovers for some work videos and get those out of the way if I really wanted to.

Or I could do something completely different. I could actually leave the house for some reason, perhaps pay a visit to CEX in town and see if they have anything interesting. I could go for a walk on the common (although I feel like the exact time I'm typing this is probably not the best time to do that, given how hot and humid it appears to be outside, so I will probably save that for later). I could pull down a random game from the shelf and give that a go. I could do some creative writing. I could write about a game I've been playing recently. I could record some Let's Play-style videos (again, I think it might be a bit too hot to do that right now). I could learn what "colour grading" is. I could practice some Japanese.

This is the problem, y'see. The problem is not that I have nothing to do, it's that I have a lot of options for what I could do, and pretty much all of them would be enjoyable and/or fulfilling in some way. One might say that this means it doesn't really matter which one of them I pick, as I will be having an enjoyable and fulfilling experience regardless. But for some reason, when this sort of mental block strikes, it doesn't quite work like that; my brain starts to feel genuine anxiety over whether or not I am picking the "correct" or "best" option, whatever that means — and there really is no "correct" or "best" option here. There is nothing I have to do; there is nothing that will make my life significantly better or worse if I do or don't do it. So all I need to do is just… pick something.

My intent was to follow that paragraph with something along the lines of "So I'm off to go and… [x]". But as I went to type that, my brain started a tug-of-war process with itself, still worrying over whether or not I was making the right choice. So I'm going to set myself a firm but friendly ultimatum — without being aggressive or sergeant-majorish about it — and say that by the time I finish writing this paragraph, I will have made a decision of what to do for the immediate now, not necessarily the whole day, but for the period immediately following completing this paragraph. Whenever I finish this paragraph. I am absolutely, positively, definitely not stalling for time while I attempt to get my mind in order. Definitely not. Perish the thought! Who would do something like that, even? That's ridiculous. I can absolutely, definitely make a decision on what Nice Thing I would like to do today.

I'm going to go and play Terranigma for a bit. Then we'll see what happens from there.

There, see, that wasn't so hard, was it?

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The post #oneaday Day 778: That feeling you should be doing something appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For the unfamiliar, Splatoon Raiders is a Nintendo Switch 2 game that, in contrast to the prior three Splatoon games, places the single-player experience at the forefront. Those of you who have never played a Splatoon game before may be surprised to note that there is, in fact, a single-player game in every Splatoon game, and even more surprised to hear that it has been consistently very good in the past — it's just very few people ever really talk about it, as the focus of the series has always been on its competitive multiplayer modes. And that's a pity, because although each game's single-player campaign is perhaps a little on the short side, they (and the DLC for the more recent ones) have been consistently excellent, featuring top-notch level design and some quality gameplay that blends action, platforming, puzzle solving and simple observation skills.

Splatoon Raiders is a little bit different. Although it unfolds in a series of self-contained levels, these are, for the most part, a tad more open than the rather linear, abstract levels of prior Splatoon campaigns. There are some stages that very much have the feel of classic single-player Splatoon — mostly the "Sample Dungeon" stages which challenge you to overcome a series of obstacles and encounters with a specific loadout — but on the whole, the focus is a bit different.

That's no bad thing, though, and one thing Splatoon Raiders does pretty well is keep things varied. On some levels you'll be fighting your way through a relatively linear path to an end point, where you receive a treasure. On others, you'll be in an arena, battling to defeat enough enemies to build up an energy bar before time expires. Some levels present you with a series of these arenas. Others still are more open, tasking you with building up energy by defeating enemies on a relatively large map until you are able to mine a large crystal and obtain its resources.

The very nature of the game means that there's not quite as much of the clever platforming and observation challenges of classic single-player Splatoon, but that's not to say it's completely absent. In fact, most of the non-arena stages have a series of hidden items on them, and tracking these down very much has the feel of the older Splatoon campaigns, because they will require you to go a bit off the beaten track, investigate interesting-looking areas and sometimes take a few risks. And the rewards are worthwhile; besides scrolls that contain lore, most of these stages also contain a compass, which unlocks access to a semi-secret level — one of the aforementioned "Sample Dungeons".

I'll doubtless have more to say about the game when I've played it a bit more, but so far I'm impressed. The "looter shooter" element provides plenty of interesting opportunities for progression — and incentive to try various different types of weapon — without being overly obnoxious or overloading you with pointless variants on the same equipment. A variety of simple and straightforward crafting systems allow you to unlock new abilities and features. And the ability to revisit past levels in "Spicy" mode provides alternatives for gathering materials and loot than simply grinding the same level over and over again.

The only thing I'm not entirely sure about is the music. I get why it is the way it is — it's an attempt to reflect the chaos of the battles in which you find yourself — but dear Lord, there are certain tracks that sound like a school orchestra tuning up and then immediately launching into a failed attempt to play the complete soundtrack to Darius. I would have much rather had music somewhat akin to what there was in the multiplayer matches of regular Splatoon, but you can't have everything I guess. It certainly creates an atmosphere of sorts, I'll give it that!

There will, of course, be a full write-up of Splatoon Raiders on MoeGamer when I'm satisfied that I've played enough of it to be able to speak with complete confidence about it. But for now, I'm happy to say that I'm having a good time, and I'm looking forward to playing some more!

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The post #oneaday Day 776: Splatting Salmonids appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

To give another example — and the one that prompted me to write this today — I am currently playing Quintet's Illusion of Time (aka Illusion of Gaia to North Americans) and I have been thoroughly impressed by its visual design overall, but one of my favourite things is the fact that its parallax backdrops, when it uses them (it's a top-down game) accurately reflect the things that you're supposed to be "above". To put it another way, when you're high above something, the things you can see down below are accurate to what you would see if you were actually down there.

Looking back over my Soul Blazer video, I'm pretty sure Soul Blazer did this in a few places as well, but Illusion of Time seems to do it fairly consistently. And I'm impressed! They didn't have to go to that much effort, but they did!

The reason this impresses me is that a lot of games like this would have used a fairly generic parallax backdrop, and no-one would have minded too much. The illusion of depth would be there — which is what parallax is used for — and the fact that it wasn't "accurate" wouldn't have mattered, because it has no real impact on the actual gameplay.

For example, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past uses a very simple tiled parallax backdrop to show that there is something beneath you rather than it being a bottomless pit. You can use this information to recognise which pits it is safe to jump down — to get to otherwise inaccessible areas, for example — and which it is not. While an accurate reflection of the floor beneath's map might be helpful in this situation, Zelda has enough other features to allow you to calculate the place where you will end up without having to be able to see down the hole. And, indeed, with the limited area you can see through Zelda's holes (pardon me), it's probably more practical to just look at the map and recognise "this is a hole I can jump down" rather than try to figure out exactly where you'll land from the tiny bit of parallax background you can see through said hole.

In Illusion of Time, however, these parallax backgrounds are purely there to look cool. In one sequence where you're exploring a mine, for example, you initially see ropeways with hanging platforms "in front of" the screen, suggesting they're above where you currently are. Later in the stage, you get up to the level of the ropeways and ride one across a large gap. Since, so far as the game is concerned, you are in a different "room" while you're doing this, there probably didn't "need" to be a parallax background at all, but not only did Quintet include one, it was a full, accurate map of the floor beneath.

That, to me, is impressive! It is not impressive by today's standards, because today you would just build your entire level in 3D and be able to see through holes and chasms to the floor beneath naturally. I am impressed with this in Illusion of Gaia, however, because I know that it wouldn't have been that simple to do. Well, it might have been relatively simple — all it really needs to be is an image of the floor below's map used as the parallax background — but it's a level of effort I recognise as being outside of the norm for the time, and thus I appreciate it.

This is where having an understanding and an appreciation of a wide range of things within your hobby is helpful. Someone who had only ever played modern games would think nothing of this little feature. But having grown up with all these different "generations" of gaming hardware, developing a vague (if non-technical) understanding of their capabilities (and lack thereof) along the way, I can recognise when something is an impressive achievement for its original time of release.

I hope I never let go of this trait. It adds so much depth of enjoyment to my appreciation of older games — and I encourage you to try and develop it, too.

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The post #oneaday Day 771: Anachronistic wonderment appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Several people, as part of this process, pointed out that the term "retro" is not really all that helpful any more, and I'm inclined to agree. And yes, I'm aware I say this as part of a company that specifically markets itself as "retro gaming"-focused — and someone who has a "Retro Video Games" category on his blog — but what I'm about to talk about applies to all that, also.

My feelings are pretty simple: drop the "retro". They're just games. Zork? Game. Adventure for 2600? Game. The Last of Us? Game. The Witcher 3? Game. Gone Home? Game. (There, that should have covered everything that might piss at least one person off.)

The reason I say this is that as soon as you introduce the word "retro" into the mix, you also introduce a perceived barrier to entry. "Retro gaming" is perceived as a markedly different hobby to "gaming", whereas this doesn't really happen with any other medium. You might have people who are into different genres of books, movies, music, TV shows and suchlike, but you don't get people going "yeah, I'm a retro reader". Even people who make the majority of their reading time involve pre-20th century literature just "enjoy reading" — because most of them don't confine themselves to that one, single niche all of the time. Why? Because that's daft. Just because you like Jane Eyre doesn't mean you can't enjoy The Da Vinci Code or whatever. And you're not any less of a "reader" if you do.

The net effect of this when it comes to gaming is that you get people who will only ever play the latest and greatest games, and if it came out more than three weeks ago it might as well not exist, and you get people who will happily play a triple-A cinematic blockbuster one evening, an 8-bit home computer game another and a PlayStation RPG the next. You also get people who fall somewhere between those two extremes, which is a perfectly reasonable and healthy way to approach things. No-one is saying you have to enjoy everything from throughout the entirety of gaming history, but to draw a completely imaginary "hard cutoff" line between what is "modern" and what is "retro" based on, let's face it, nothing other than vibes is kind of ridiculous.

Case in point: currently, I am playing through Soul Blazer. This is a game originally released for Super NES in 1992 (1994 if you're PAL like me). There is absolutely nothing about this game that someone who has only ever played games released in the last three weeks would not be able to grasp. There's a common misconception that "retro games are complicated, you need to read the manual", but Soul Blazer is literally "move in four directions, hit things with your sword", and everything else is introduced either organically through gameplay, or explicitly told to you. You could release Soul Blazer today, completely unchanged — gorgeous pixel art has never gone out of fashion, thankfully — and it would be regarded as a good game, because it is a good game. It's not a good retro game, it's just a good game.

I think some of this likely originally stems from the crossover between the Mega Drive and SNES era to the age of PlayStation, Saturn and N64. Rumours abounded at the time that developers were specifically being discouraged from making 2D pixel art games on PlayStation, because polygonal 3D — even the relatively janky polygonal 3D of the PlayStation — was regarded as the One True Future. But I'm not sure quite how true that ever was, because one of the absolute most beloved games of that particular period — Castlevania: Symphony of the Night — was resolutely 2D, with only very occasional polygons used for special effects or parallax backgrounds. And there are countless other beautiful, wonderful and well-loved 2D games from that era — particularly on Saturn. Marginally less so on N64, but that was operating in a bit of a world of its own anyway. (Also, play Mischief Makers.)

That doesn't really explain how this sort of thinking appears to have persisted for this long, though. Yes, over the last 20 years or so there very much has been a rise in the sort of gamer who only ever buys that year's Call of Duty, FIFA/Madden or equivalent and leaves it at that, who doesn't really consider the history of the medium. But there seems to be the perception that there are plenty of people who have been gaming since the '80s — even earlier in some cases — who, for whatever reason, will not play anything released before a certain date — or, at the very least, will corral those experiences into a distinct "retro gaming" category, distinct from the implied "proper" modern gaming sector where they spend the majority of their time. I don't doubt people like that exist, but I wonder how widespread they really are.

Some of this is down to access; we're all familiar with that Video Game History Foundation report, or at least I hope we are at this point. But "not commercially available" is by no means the same as "inaccessible" these days. You don't even need original hardware; emulation of pretty much everything up to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 era is in a good place, and after that (some would argue during that period) the newer games consoles were basically just PCs anyway, so outside of a dwindling number of genuine exclusives, you can play all that stuff pretty easily, too. At this point, everyone, everywhere, so long as you have some combination of an Internet connection, a computer and a monitor or TV, can enjoy pretty much any game released within the last 50 years without very much in the way of effort.

And modern rereleases of stuff that first came out many years ago are happening, too, if you don't want to delve into the proverbial high seas! There's Hamster's Arcade and Console Archives series on the current consoles. There are numerous bespoke releases of classic console, computer and arcade games on various platforms. Evercade, the platform I work on, has a huge number of cartridges at this point, covering more that 700 games between them, all of them officially licensed rereleases!

Any perceived barrier to entry that "retro gaming" might have had in the past — be that the technical knowhow required to get old finicky hardware up and running; the possession of vintage CRT TV hardware; an understanding of what "RGB" is; the ability to recap an Xbox or replace the battery in a Dreamcast — has not been there for a good long while, unless you want to enjoy a specific type of experience. (Snobbery over whether you're "doing retro gaming right" is a whole other discussion, mind, and it's hopefully already clear where my opinions fall on that side of things.)

If you enjoy games, you (hopefully) just enjoy games. There is absolutely no rule written down anywhere that places down a hard boundary of what you are allowed to enjoy, based on whatever combination of "year of release" and "age of player" people are using to calculate their completely arbitrary definition of "retro". Sure, some older stuff might take a little adjusting to if you're unfamiliar with it — much as reading Jane Eyre takes a bit of adjustment after reading The Da Vinci Code — but it's still the same basic form of entertainment at heart: push buttons, fun (or at least interesting) stuff happens.

Go on. Spoil yourself. Play something from a system you've never explored before. Revisit a game you haven't played since childhood. Fire up a copy of that one game you always saw in magazines and lusted over, but which you never got for Christmas or birthdays. And, with an appropriately receptive and open mind, I pretty much guarantee that you'll have an experience just as interesting, compelling and worthwhile as if you played something that released last week.

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The post #oneaday Day 764: Just games appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Then I looked at what I had written and thought, "no, I should not give in to despair, even if it does seem like it has been a very long time since anything has happened which I can honestly say is to the betterment of humanity as a whole". So I deleted all of it, replaced the image of horseshit with a picture of Patti (above) and decided that a helpful thought exercise would be to ponder some Nice Things. Doesn't matter what they are, how big they are, how important they are — just that they are Nice Things that I thought were worth celebrating. So let's pick out… ooh, let's say, five, as that's a nice number to work with. And I'm going to focus on gaming because a lot of stuff in gaming sucks right now.

Mike Bithell's new game looks cool

Mike Bithell, of Thomas Was Alone fame, has been teasing his new game for a while, and yesterday he finally revealed it. It's called Vampirium: 1997 and is set in an alternate near-history where Dracula is the king of England, and you are one of his retainers, with dark powers all your own.

Bithell describes the game as an "immersive sim", but if you're thinking of a first-person adventure-style affair — which is what the term "immersive sim" usually gets applied to — you might be surprised to discover that this is a rather more abstract affair that, from what we've seen so far, looks to take a lot of cues from tabletop gaming. The "immersive sim" aspect comes from how you have a lot of freedom to tackle situations as you see fit — supposedly you can "click and combine game tiles to access verbs and craft your own diabolical resolutions". Sounds pretty interesting to me!

The game doesn't have a release date as yet, but will be launching into Early Access in the near future, and having a bunch of stuff added to it as the community gets to grips with it. It will then have a "1.0" release when all that is done, and we should have another great vampire game on our hands.

Wadjet Eye Games is 20 years old

If you (yes, you!) have ever uttered the fateful words "adventure games are dead" at any point in recent history, you have not been paying attention, because one of the absolute best developer-publishers to ever Do That Thing turned 20 years old today. Yes! Wadjet Eye Games has been releasing excellent adventure games since 2006, and their work has been going from strength to strength year after year — both in terms of the stuff they've made themselves, and the titles they've published from other developers.

I honestly, genuinely believe that the point-and-click adventure game is in a better place today than it ever was back in the LucasArts and Sierra heyday; don't get me wrong, I adore the "golden age" games and always will, since they were formative experiences for me. But you cannot look at incredible recent(ish) releases like The Excavation of Hob's Barrow (developed by Cloak & Dagger and published by Wadjet Eye) and Old Skies (developed in-house at Wadjet Eye) and think "nah, it was way better back then".

It fills my heart with gladness to know that amid all the chaos in the games industry right now, a company dedicated to releasing games of the kind it believes in — not what shareholders want, not what passing trends say you "should" be making, not what is supposedly the most profitable — is able to not only survive, but thrive. I sincerely hope Wadjet Eye Games continues to stick around for many years to come.

Scott Pilgrim EX is fun

My limited edition copy of Scott Pilgrim EX, which comes in a lovely oversized NeoGeo-esque clamshell case, arrived yesterday, and I spent most of the evening playing it through. It's a lot of fun! It successfully manages to feel true to the prior game — which is an all-time favourite — while shaking things up a bit and keeping things interesting.

I'll have more to say about this over on MoeGamer at some point in the near future, but suffice it to say for now that I had a lot of fun with my first playthrough — and with a full run through the game only being about 2.5 hours in total, I can see plenty more in my future, particularly with the possibility of online multiplayer in the mix.

Soul Blazer is great

I already knew this, but my recent starting-a-new-playthrough-and-I'll-probably-definitely-finish-it-this-time go at Quintet's awesome SNES action RPG Soul Blazer has reminded me how much I like that game. Again, I will write more about this on MoeGamer when I've actually beaten the damn thing — I'm a little shy of halfway through so far, I believe — but I am happy to say, right now, that if you have never played this delightful little game (and it is pretty little — I reckon it'll take less than 10 hours to beat, which begs the question why I've never gotten around to doing so) then you are very much missing out on one of the most charming 16-bit games there ever was.

I have finished "The Best Bit" of Final Fantasy XI

A lot of people seem to agree that Chains of Promathia is the best bit of Final Fantasy XI and now, outside of the epilogue quests and the optional Bahamut fight (which I might wait to do until I'm level 99 for the sake of simplicity) I have finally beaten it! This has been a kind of "gaming ambition" for me pretty much ever since I played Final Fantasy XI for the first time, and I have finally made it a reality.

This is another thing I would like to write about on MoeGamer in the very near future, so I will simply say that I enjoyed myself, and I'm glad I finally took this journey. I think I need at least a short break before heading off to seek the Treasures of Aht Urhgan though…!

Anyway, those are Five Good Things of Varying Relevance in gaming right now. I post these not to diminish the impact or importance of the Bad Stuff happening at the moment, but instead to hopefully provide a little reprieve. I sincerely wish that everyone who is going through tough times right now — and there are a lot of people going through tough times in the industry right now — is able to at least find some joy in the day-to-day, and doesn't give in to despair; I also hope that many of these people will tell their stories, frankly and honestly, because they need to be told. And they need to be told by the people who have been affected, not by some random idiot on the Internet.

One day, I hope these terrible times will be behind us, and we will be able to look back on them and go "fucking hell, never do that again". Until then, take care of yourselves. Don't give up. And play Soul Blazer.

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The post #oneaday Day 762: Some nice things appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Some of my fondest memories of playing games in the early (relatively speaking) days of PC gaming were of id Software titles. Commander Keen. Wolfenstein 3-D. Doom. Quake. All absolute legends of gaming history, each for their own reasons.

I didn't just love id's games for the games themselves — though that was a big part of it. I loved them for the way they brought my friends and I together over shared enjoyment of them. I loved them for helping me come out of my shell a bit and do some part-time work for a local shareware library. I loved them for how they allowed me to relate to the people I worked alongside during my Year 10 work experience in the PC Zone offices.

And, of course, I loved them for introducing me to shareware, providing me with hours of entertainment for absolutely no cost whatsoever. I played the shareware episodes of Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom to absolute death, only coming to the full versions some time later — many years later in some cases. At the time I was playing these games, I was still a teenager, and not financially independent enough to do something as serious as mail-ordering the full version of a game from the States. I kind of wish I had at least ordered a copy of Doom; those original mail-order boxed versions are worth a fair bit now!

And there's all the surrounding culture, too. Wolfenstein 3-D introduced me to modding games. I'm not generally a huge fan of modding games these days, but back in the Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom days I found it fascinating, and highly enjoyable to make Wolfenstein 3-D maps in particular. (At the time, I found Doom editing to be a bit confusing and never really got on with it. Maybe I should try it again now I am old and, in theory, less stupid.) Hell, as I've told the story numerous times before, modding Wolfenstein 3-D once earned me $200 and a place in the official "Super Upgrades" expansion pack by Apogee — an oft-forgotten but nonetheless official addon to the original game.

Of course I'm aware that the id Software of today is very different from the id Software I grew up with — but I'm sure there were at least some people who have built a whole career and a life there. While the company isn't going away entirely, I am saddened to see it take such a devastating blow; the current state of the games industry is, frankly, really quite worrying, and I'm concerned a lot of well-established names aren't going to survive what is increasingly looking like a full-on crash.

I'm not going to be angry and yell about what has happened, for a variety of reasons. Most of all I just want to raise a glass to id Software, makers of some of the greatest games of all time, and celebrate the amazing times they have given me over the years — and continue to give me, as I so often return to their most famous works.

Who knows what the future holds? I certainly don't. I sincerely hope that, in the long term, it looks a lot brighter, especially for everyone who has been affected by Recent Happenings.

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The post #oneaday Day 761: The depths of the id appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

If you're reading this, you probably don't need me to tell you my feelings about old games, but I'm going to talk about them anyway — if only for the benefit of anyone who might be stumbling across this blog for the first time, or for anyone who, somehow, did not know the following about me.

I love old games! I always have done. For as long as I can remember, I have loved going back to earlier gaming systems and either rediscovering old favourites, or discovering brand new ones. I quite regularly boot up the MiSTer's Atari 8-bit, ST and Amiga cores to play the games of my childhood — and the games that I lusted after in my childhood. I also explore the libraries of consoles that I never had the opportunity to own, or which were prohibitively expensive, or which just passed me by for one reason or another. It's a constant delight, and I think, as the article linked states, it has done me a lot of good, too.

Probably the best thing that Being Into Old Games has taught me is not to give a rat's ass about performance, unless said performance is actively detrimental to the overall experience. I grew up gaming on systems that could barely manage simple flat-shaded 3D polygonal scenes at about 10 frames per second, and had a ton of fun on platforms like the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64, both of which have graphical capabilities it would be very easy to find laughable today if you're a snobbish dickhead.

There really are people out there who will declare games from this era (and earlier) "unplayable" because they run at an inconsistent frame rate, or a low resolution, or have blurry textures, or use a "weird" controller. (Fun fact: the Nintendo 64 controller is absolutely fine when playing games that were designed for it! That said, if you really don't get along with it, I recommend either this for modern USB devices, or this for original hardware.)

There are people out there who completely fail to grasp the absolute phenomenon that was GoldenEye and Perfect Dark split-screen multiplayer. None of us cared that the frame rate was, by today's standards, bobbins! The games were fun! That was literally all that mattered! And you can still live your life that way! I bet if I hooked up a MiSTer with four controllers and ran Perfect Dark on it at a party, people would be fighting over it by the end of the evening. (This makes the mistaken assumption that I would 1) throw a party and 2) have anyone to invite to a party, mind, but I am speaking purely hypothetically here.)

Don't get me wrong, it is undoubtedly nice to play a modern, high-resolution game that runs super smoothly and slickly. Certain genres particularly benefit from absolutely rock-solid performance — but that doesn't magically make games from years gone by that didn't run at a constant 60+ fps suddenly completely unplayable or not worth bothering with. Ridge Racer Type 4, one of the greatest video games ever created, only just about cracks 30 and runs at a resolution of 320×240 pixels (on NTSC displays, anyway) during races! And yet I go back to Ridge Racer Type 4 more than pretty much any other racing game released since then… except maybe the Project Gotham games.

One of the nicest things about older games that I'm coming to appreciate a whole lot more as I get older is that they just respect your time more. Even in RPGs, there's a lot less endless grinding, a lot less "content" designed for "player retention" — and I know some people like them, but the complete absence of Achievements and/or Trophies is absolute bliss, because it means you can play and enjoy each and every game exactly how you want to, without feeling obliged to tick things off a checklist — including boring, tedious things you don't actually want to do — lest you feel you haven't "Platinumed" it properly.

I am a strong, strong advocate for expanding your gaming horizons and exploring the incredibly vast, diverse and vibrant history of the medium. And I mean all of the history! There are Atari 2600 (River Raid! H.E.R.O.! Seaquest! Keystone Kapers!) and Intellivision (Night Stalker! Tower of Doom! Cloudy Mountain!) games that still play great today — and which I, personally, frequently return to, by choice, for a gaming session of an evening. There are myriad Super NES, PlayStation and Saturn RPGs just waiting for me to play them — and I'm looking forward to doing so. And even though I played a lot of N64 back in the day, there's still a lot of games from that relatively slim library that I've never tried — and really want to!

If you're concerned for the future of gaming — and given all the recent happenings, I absolutely do not blame you for that — then don't just give up and assume it's all over. Even if there were to be no more games released ever after tomorrow — and we all know that's not going to happen, regardless of whether or not we're actually in the process of seeing a new Crash happen — there are enough games that have already been released, across all platforms, to keep all of us busy for the rest of our lives.

Something doesn't stop being relevant, worthwhile or interesting because it's 20, 30, 40 years old or more. In many cases, these games are all the more remarkable for remaining relevant, worthwhile and interesting after so long — and it's not just nostalgia. There's something there; something of great value. And I implore you to spend some time exploring it, particularly if you've never done so.

Now I'm off to play Soul Blazer for the rest of the evening.

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The post #oneaday Day 760: My own feelings on old games appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I was working my way through the Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi, one of the last dungeons in the Chains of Promathia expansion. This dungeon initially looks like something of a labyrinth, but there's actually a linear path through it; a lot of exits are blocked off, forcing you to go one particular direction, and certain doors can only be triggered by activating a "Quasilumin" entity at a special alcove, which will then proceed on patrol — while you have to protect them, naturally — and open various portals along the way.

This task is soloable, particularly with the computer-controlled "Trust" characters you can bring nearly everywhere with you in the game at this point, but it can be a slow process, what with you having to stop and start the Quasilumin in order to keep them out of trouble, clear a path through the enemies ahead and follow along to make sure they don't leave you behind. There's also a time limit on each patrol, so you can't hang around too long.

Partway through my explorations, I ran into another player who was seemingly doing the same thing as me. We didn't really say a lot to one another, but it was pretty clear we were working on the same objective. Since Final Fantasy XI's dungeons are not instanced — that means you can just randomly run into other players doing the same thing as you, rather than getting your own "private" version of a dungeon to clear at your leisure — it tends to pay off if you team up with people you randomly run into.

And sure enough, it did. We settled into a good rhythm where my companion would keep an eye on the Quasilumin, starting and stopping it as required, while I would go on ahead and clear out the enemies in the path it was about to take. Together, it still took a while, but we eventually successfully made it through the whole dungeon, and it was a really nice, warm moment that we shared together.

I'm generally not a big fan of playing with random other people, whether the game in question is competitive or cooperative. In competitive games, I don't like dealing with sweaties who take things far too seriously, and in cooperative games… well, I also don't like dealing with sweaties who take things far too seriously. You would think cooperative games would be a place where "nice" people hang out, but in my experience, no, that is absolutely not the case. In fact, some cooperative games feel way more toxic than anything competitive I have ever played.

All of the above is the case if you are playing structured activities, whether they are cooperative or competitive. When people jump into something like this, of course they want to win, and if they feel like someone is holding them back in some way — whether or not that is a fair assessment — they will, if they're a Certain Type of Person, kick off.

But if you're in an activity where the two (or more) of you have run into one another by complete chance, I tend to find that it's much more likely you will have a pleasant shared experience with one another. Last night's example in Final Fantasy XI is just the most recent example, but I also still have very fond memories of a time I was playing Test Drive Unlimited on Xbox 360, back when its servers were still active, and encountered someone on the high-speed freeway that runs across a lot of the map. This person was obviously just hooning it up and down the freeway in their Ferrari looking for trouble, and so I provided some trouble for them. We didn't even get into the game's organised one-on-one races by flashing our lights at one another; we just careened across most of the map, causing chaos along the way and having a thoroughly lovely time in the process.

Other people can be all right, sometimes. If you catch them when they're very much "at play" rather than taking their entertainment extremely super-seriously, it can even be super-fun to hang out with them and just dick around — no worrying about stats, progress or efficiency. Just pure, unbridled fun and joy; something we're all too short of these days, and thus I encourage you to cling onto it whenever you encounter it.

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The post #oneaday Day 759: Accidental multiplayer appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm not entirely sure why this became such a common trope in role-playing games, particularly those of Asian origin. I assume there's some sort of inherent significance to hexagons — or perhaps someone once just thought they looked cool and futuristic, and everyone else copied that first person. Both explanations are entirely plausible.

A lot of people mock role-playing games that pull the "final boss is in space!" trope, but I love it. One of my favourite things in video games is getting the opportunity to explore and play in abstract environments. There's a definite appeal to realistic environments under the right circumstances, but for me, there's always something special about making that switch from "recognisable" to "completely alien". Doesn't matter what game it is; if you go from hanging out in "the real world" to running along platforms suspended in a starfield — or, indeed, as I have been doing in Chains of Promathia this evening, running across a seemingly solid "sea" that floats above the land far below me, leaving a trail of hexagons and the sound of musical notes with every step I take.

I think the reason I like it is the fact it drives home how video games give you the opportunity to "do" things that are outright impossible in real life. There is not actually anywhere that exists that consists of floating platforms in space or transparent hexagons suspended over a petrified natural environment, and thus having the opportunity to spend time in those places as a virtual world is appealing. It's fascinating. In some respects, it provides a window into the creators' imagination, allowing us a sense that we are sharing in something quite special.

Of course, there's an argument to be made that when you explore a realistic but nonetheless fictional world in a game, you're also stepping into the creators' imagination, but it never feels quite as exciting as getting the opportunity to go somewhere completely alien. It's a silly trope, probably one that is overused at this point — and definitely one that has been used inappropriately (Half-Life's finale says hello) — but it's one that I will always like and appreciate.

I am tempted to see if I can finish off Chains of Promathia this evening, but it is already midnight, so I feel like I should probably go to bed like a responsible adult. Probably.

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The post #oneaday Day 758: Hexagons and light appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The two games are very different experiences, but the one thing they have in common is that they respect your time in the way that titles from, say, the PlayStation 2 era did. You can do a complete playthrough of Star Fox in under an hour, and Rhythm Paradise Groove consists entirely of self-contained sequences that are no more than two or three minutes, tops. You can blast through all the "content" both games have in a relatively short space of time, but their longevity comes from their replay value: Star Fox for the pursuit of "medals" by attaining specific scores on each level while ensuring all your computer-controlled companions survive, and Rhythm Paradise Groove for attaining "Amazing" and "Perfect" ratings on each stage.

I'm growing increasingly fond of games that aren't a huge commitment to play; games that you can just pick up and enjoy whenever you feel like it, without feeling that strange sense of "guilt" many of us have if we already have a "big game" on the go and start something else that is likely to take more than 40 hours to get through. I'm not just talking about bite-sized arcade-style games, either; the other night I started playing Soul Blazer on Super NES, and I know that's relatively short in the grand scheme of RPGs, so I'm looking forward to finally making my way through the whole thing; something I've been meaning to do for ages.

I like a good long game to get my teeth into now and again, you know that — but I won't lie; there are times when I start something that I think is going to be relatively light and breezy, see it has an endless skill tree and various numbers to grind up very slowly in the name of increasing my poison damage by 0.1%, and just think "oh no, this is going to take ages, isn't it?" There are a significant number of games that have been released over the course of the last 10-15 years or so that would have really benefited from just scaling back, like, a lot, and providing a much more focused experience. They usually don't because they have to justify their massive budgets and thousands of people working on them — plus, unfortunately, there is a subculture among capital-G Gamers who complain any time something comes out with what they perceive as "not enough content".

It's unfortunate that so many developers have listened to the people who whine in Steam forums about games being "abandoned" because they haven't had an update in the last three weeks (protip: sometimes those games are finished) or that they need to see a "roadmap" of "new content" coming down the pipeline. I always feel the exact opposite to this; if I see a game that has a lengthy roadmap — particularly if that roadmap involves copious amounts of DLC — I lose a lot of interest in that game. Sometimes I will return to it later to see if there's some sort of "complete" edition available, but most of the time I will just shrug my shoulders and go and play a game that is actually finished instead, rather than spending valuable time playing something that I know is probably going to change and expand in the time it takes me to beat it.

I like both Star Fox and Rhythm Paradise Groove because they are both finished games, and seeing everything they have to offer is within relatively easy reach. Both will require some practice and some actual playing skill to see all that stuff, but neither of them feel like they're going to be commitments with hour counts that number into the three digits just to see the credits roll.

I suspect Star Fox might see some updates to its multiplayer mode if it proves popular, but as a single-player experience, it is completely self-contained and does everything it needs to. Rhythm Paradise Groove I suspect will just stand as it is — it didn't even need an update when I put the cartridge in for the first time earlier, which is always a very welcome sight these days.

I hope we see more games like this. Nintendo seems to be quite keen on them right now, and I'm not complaining when they are as good as Star Fox and Rhythm Paradise Groove are — and speaking of which, I'll have more to say about the latter over on MoeGamer when I've played a bit more of it. For now, I'll just say "cha, cha, cha, bom bom" and leave it at that…

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The post #oneaday Day 756: Video games like they used to be appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Anyway. Yes. What I wanted to talk about was the fact that once we got into sixth form, a lot of us started to enjoy our first real tastes of proper independence, despite, in most cases, still living with our parents. Learning to drive allowed us to go places without having to rely on getting our parents to give us a lift — and give them the full details of where we were going. We were trusted to take responsibility for our own education, meaning several of us went to one single General Studies lesson in two years and still managed to ace the exam. Taking part-time jobs of various descriptions allowed us to earn some money, giving us considerably more financial freedom than childish "pocket money" provided. (Although saying that, my grandparents were always very generous in that regard.)

That latter one is an important one, as it coincided with us being able to spend that money on things that we liked. For my friends and I, those things were video games. And it was an enormously exciting time to be interested in video games, with the PlayStation having hit the market a few years earlier, and the Nintendo 64 finally arriving in Europe as we were kicking off our period of post-compulsory education.

I have fond memories of sixth form not just because I enjoyed the academic side of things — that's something I've talked about elsewhere — but also because of what happened between those classes. For my friends and I, we spent the majority of our time hanging out in the Art department of the school rather than the main sixth form common room; the corner of the Art department had essentially been taken over as a semi-private secondary common room that was almost exclusively used by my friends and I. It was a comfortable place to hang out, and we had many pleasant free periods spent there enjoying a bacon and cheese baguette from the recreation centre on the school site, just chatting about all sorts of silly things.

Quite often, if we had several free periods in a row, or free time up to and including lunchtime, we would wander off the school site — as we were allowed to do now, because we were big, brave, responsible 16+ year olds — and walk into the town centre. This was a walk of about a mile in total — my 45 year old bones ache just thinking about that — but we did it on a pretty regular basis. When we got into town, we had a bit of a routine: we'd go to The Baker's Oven for a bacon and cheese puff and a Belgian bun (though not if we had recently consumed one of the aforementioned baguettes), then head to Barneys, the local record shop, and have a little look around. I would always feel mildly uneasy in there because it was still the age where one felt distinctly judged for one's taste in music, but after a while I learned to just own my self-described "eclectic" tastes in music.

Barneys wasn't the main attraction of our trips to town, though. We saved the best for last by heading to First Compute, a pokey little shop in the "Cross Keys" shopping mews that was initially little more than a cupboard with games for pretty much every platform you can think of festooning every wall (and a fair bit of the floor). By the time we were in sixth form, though, the owner, who we only knew as "Richie", had moved venue to a slightly larger establishment, but the distinct feeling that as much stuff as possible was being crammed in remained. There were big box PC games on some shelves on the left, and PlayStation and N64 games on the right.

At the time, I had had the good fortune to score a few freelance writing opportunities for outlets such as PC Zone and the Official Nintendo Magazine. These at least partly came about because I did my Year 10 work experience on PC Zone when my brother was the editor, but my brother's the sort of person who wouldn't have recommended me to his successors if he didn't think I could have done a good job. And I did do a good job — and, more to the point, in those days, you got paid a hell of a lot more for cranking out an article than you do for many of today's websites. We're talking about £300-£500 per piece here.

As you can probably imagine, being in a situation where I had very little in the way of living expenses thanks to still living at home, this cash very quickly burned a sizeable hole in my pocket, and my friends knew this. I would often get a little "gentle encouragement" to pick up a new game for either PlayStation or Nintendo 64, and honestly, as much as peer pressure very much was involved, I didn't need much convincing. I found both systems to be a ton of fun, and I loved being able to share my enjoyment of them with my closest friends.

On the Nintendo 64 front, we quite often picked up games with a multiplayer focus, as we spent a lot of time around one another's houses, crowded around the television enjoying split-screen fun. We even tried some types of game that, in prior years, we would have never considered, like EA's World Cup 98 when the eponymous tournament was on.

On the PlayStation front, my preference was, as you can probably imagine if you know me even a little bit, for role-playing games, and dear Lord do I ever wish I'd held on to the vast majority of those games I bought all those years ago, because little was I to know that role-playing games in particular would become enormously expensive on the second-hand market.

Of all those times I was mildly peer-pressured into buying a new game, I only remember one solitary occasion when I was disappointed and regretful enough in my purchase to actually return the game in question. That game was a title for PlayStation called Blaze & Blade: Eternal Quest, and it was a polygonal action RPG for up to four players. It looked like it might be cool from the box art, and there were some interesting ideas in it, but it was very much not what I was looking for from a game at the time. I'm actually quite curious to revisit this game through older, more mature eyes, as I suspect I may have treated it a bit harshly.

The pattern of go-to-town, buy-a-game continued once I got to university and fell in with friends who also enjoyed gaming. Since I was still getting some cash from freelancing, I still had a bit of disposable income, though living away from home meant I did actually have living expenses now. Still, I managed to pick up a bunch of interesting games, and reading the manuals while on the bus home was always a highlight of these times that I think back on fondly. It's a cliché to talk about reading the manual on the way home, but it really was a thing we did, and it really is something I have exceedingly happy memories of.

New games haven't come with manuals for a long time now, outside of a few special cases in limited-print editions, and situations like Evercade where the whole thing is built on the idea of "how it used to be" — and with the apparently impending death of physical releases, even the experience of going to a game shop, picking up a game and coming home with it will be lost. Of course, many people — including me — tend to order their games online these days anyway, so many of us haven't been doing that anyway — but it's still sad to think that there are generations of video game enthusiasts who will never be able to enjoy things in quite the same way we did around the end of the millennium and the turn of the century.

I'm mad at Sony for actively encouraging the death of that. They are deliberately trying to destroy what was once an important part of the overall culture surrounding video games. I suspect those who have never been deeply into them might not understand why this is a big deal — and I equally suspect the C-suite execs who mandated this are exactly the sort of people who have never actually given a shit about video games as a creative medium or form of expression — but it really was. Sony's announcement left a lot of people feeling like they really had lost something; feeling something akin to grief. It might sound silly to say that about something as simple as going into a shop and buying a box with a bit of plastic inside it, but it really is the case.

I sincerely hope the company does a hasty U-turn on this, but I very much doubt they will. If that's the case, that's the end of me and PlayStation. Once there's no more games to buy and proudly put on my shelf, that's it for me and new games. I've always said this. And in some respects, I don't mind, either — it'll mean I don't have to worry about running out of what little space I have left on my shelves, and that I will be able to focus on diving deep into my collection and discovering all the things I haven't gotten around to yet.

But still. I will be sad to have lived long enough to see a medium and a culture surrounding it grow, thrive and then wither. I am already sad that I have seen that happen, but every new week seems to bring a new horror in that regard.

We will always have the good times, though. That's the one thing they can never revoke the license for.

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The post #oneaday Day 755: The lost art of going to buy a game appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I remember my first encounter with PlayStation vividly. My brother had come home to visit, and, as he often did, he had brought some gaming hardware with him. On previous visits — and prior to me getting my own SNES — he had brought both a Super Famicom and Mega Drive back with him on various occasions, but this new PlayStation thing was one of the most exciting things I had ever seen.

We loaded up Ridge Racer and you could play Galaxian while it was loading. Supposedly you could unlock some stuff if you could win the Galaxian game before the game finished loading, but I didn't manage that right away. (I mastered it some time later.) Then, once Ridge Racer was loaded, it was another example of something we'd previously described the SNES as being: "like having an arcade machine hooked up to your TV".

This feeling didn't go away with Tekken, which my brother had a prerelease copy of. He also had Raiden Project, which, while less obviously "impressive" than both Ridge Racer and Tekken, I found myself enjoying a lot, and still consider one of my favourite PlayStation titles to this day.

Eventually, my brother left behind this Japanese-model PlayStation at my parents' house for me to have — he had got his own British model. I was thrilled, particularly once I learned the "pen-lid trick" — a means of circumventing the console's region and copy protection by propping the disc tray open and carefully timing the swapping of discs. It was a good way to wear out your laser before long, but until I got my own UK PlayStation, it was my main means of experiencing PAL releases.

My friends got PlayStations around a similar time, and we all really enjoyed them, each cultivating our own little collection of games.

Then came Final Fantasy VII. I first heard about this from my brother, and one thing made me want to pick it up immediately: he told me that it was the first game that had made him and various other people he knew cry. This might seem like a strange reason to be excited for a game, but having been enjoying point-and-click adventures on PC for a few years at this point, I was immensely excited by the possibilities that interactive storytelling offered, and I was curious exactly what this game actually was.

I started to play it and was initially confused. Why did the screen go all swirly and then I couldn't move, but I had to select things from a menu instead? Why did the characters look different when they were walking around to when they were in battle? Why were numbers popping out of things?

I'd encountered the RPG genre in a very early form back on the Atari 8-bit, but had always found those games to be difficult to understand as a child. Some years later, I got into HeroQuest and Advanced Heroquest, and started to understand how numbers and turn-based combat worked together. And with Final Fantasy VII, I quickly learned how the computerised take on an RPG worked — and that I liked it a lot.

My friends loved it, too. We all swapped stories of our custom-named parties at school, arguing over who had given their characters the "best" names and who had recoloured the text window the most attractively garish combination of shades. We all agreed it was an incredible experience, and played it multiple times in succession — often in immediate succession. I estimate over the course of one particular summer, each of us must have played through the entirety of that game somewhere between six and ten times.

My parents went away for a few weeks and left me in charge of the house. I hosted an ill-advised party that I got into a lot of trouble for — I have to laugh in retrospect — but the best thing about that summer was having my friends over pretty much every day, and we would just play Final Fantasy VII together while eating Pot Noodles and getting steadily quite drunk. On one particularly memorable occasion, we challenged one another to play from the beginning and stay up as long as possible; we played through the night and into the next morning, hitting each other with sofa cushions to wake each other up if we looked like we were nodding off. It was a truly wonderful experience, and absolutely a treasured memory.

It all feels so far away now. I would love to have a summer like that which I just described again, but it feels like a far-off dream at this point.

Still, I mean I am still in touch with some of those friends, so perhaps, just perhaps, we could make something like that happen once again sometime. Maybe.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 754: Late '90s promise appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I am quite a few episodes behind, but the nice thing about the show is that its very nature means that it is somewhat timeless, and each episode can be enjoyed at any time. Thus, yesterday and today I enjoyed some discussion of Next Generation magazine's "Are You a Hardcore Gamer?" quiz (circa 1998) and the pair's collaboration with Coury and Try from My Life in Gaming to discuss a "draft" of games from the 1995-1997 period covered by Fun Factor's first season.

Obviously I will take this opportunity to recommend you go give Fun Factor a listen (or even better, watch: the podcast's YouTube channel lets you look at the magazines as they're talking about them!) but today's post isn't specifically about the podcast. Rather, it's about how the discussions on the episodes I listened to, particularly the "draft" episode, have inspired me to make some time to play through a bunch of games I keep telling myself I've "always meant to get around to". By this I am primarily referring to retro games, particularly of the RPG variety, of which I have about a bazillion loaded up and ready to go almost immediately thanks to my MiSTer Multisystem 2 setup upstairs. And I can even play them on a CRT!

I hesitate to start new RPGs because I have it in my head that they're all massively long. And to be sure, your average RPG does tend to be on the longer side. But listening to the chaps enthusing about various titles like Chrono Trigger (which, to my shame, I've never finished), Final Fantasy IV (which I have finished and know is pretty short) and various others makes me think… I should just sit down and play some of these things that I've been "always meaning to". Including some that I've started and never got around to finishing, like Soul Blazer.

Soul Blazer is definitely one I want to tick off my list because it is an excellent game, and I've always felt like it wouldn't be quite right to tackle Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma, both of which I want to play, before beating that one. They are considered an extremely loose "trilogy", after all, and I think it would be particularly interesting to play in succession.

Part of me says "no, don't start something new, you have Final Fantasy XI on the go". But Final Fantasy XI is very long indeed, and sometimes you just want a palate cleanser. Sometimes that's something really quick and breezy, like the new Star Fox, while at other times, it's another game with a bit more substance, but which is unlikely to end up with an hour count that is three or more digits in length.

So probably not tonight, because it's getting late and I still have a farty stomach full of regret from the pizza I had last night, but very soon, I'm going to set some time aside to enjoy some retro gaming. I have all the kit — I might as well make good use of it and enjoy myself, non?

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 753: Finding the Fun Factor appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Oh, and on top of that, the "physical" release of the game is a code-in-a-box. Fuck off with that.

I can't think of many series that have managed to so very thoroughly turn me off as Grand Theft Auto. I absolutely loved the original one, from the moment my underage self bought the original big-box PC version from "First Compute" one lunchtime at sixth form. ("Ol' Richie", the guy who ran the shop, knew I was lying about my birthdate, but he didn't really care. My friends and I spent too much money in his shop for him to make a fuss.) I likewise adored Grand Theft Auto III (I never played the second one to this day) and quite liked Vice City, particularly its soundtrack, which I had the box set of CDs for.

The series started to lose me around San Andreas. There's no way of saying this that doesn't sound a bit racist, so I'm just going to say it, acknowledge that is what it sounds like, and attempt to explain myself: I found that game's focus on strongly black-coded urban culture to not only be difficult to engage with, but outright indecipherable at times. To put it another way, I had found Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City to be a lot more accessible, simply because I was more familiar with the tropes of "mafia-style" gangsterism that they both leaned heavily on; by contrast, San Andreas' central culture felt jarringly different to me the moment I started playing, largely because I was so unfamiliar with it. I had never watched any movies or TV shows that dealt with inner-city black urban culture — I hadn't even really listened to much in the way of contemporary black urban music at the time I played San Andreas — and thus being thrown into the deep end of it right from the start of San Andreas was… an adjustment.

There is, of course, a very strong argument to be made for using video games to immerse yourself in a culture that is different from your own — hell, I do it all the time with Japanese games — and in many respects we should look at San Andreas as quite admirable for unashamedly putting black culture front and centre at a time there was not nearly as much truly inclusive, representative media as there is now.

But two things. One, I'm not sure Grand Theft Auto as a series is the one to tackle this in the most respectful manner; I don't know enough about real-world urban culture, particularly from the 1990s, to know how "authentic" San Andreas was — or if it was, in fact, just riddled with stereotypes. And two, I, personally, a middle-class white dude, with everything that entails, just found San Andreas, at least in its early hours, to be so far outside of what I was familiar with, both in my life and in the media I had previously engaged with, that I found myself thinking about the game as a whole much less fondly than I had done towards Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City, even though there are a lot of ways in which San Andreas is, in theory at least, a "better game". I'm sorry, that's just how it is; I can't change my own reaction to a creative work!

Anyway, the upshot of all that is that after San Andreas, I was a lot more lukewarm on the series as a whole than I had been previously. When Grand Theft Auto IV came out, I didn't pick it up right away, and when I did pick it up, I found that I wasn't enjoying it nearly as much as I had done III and Vice City. Part of that was down to the different cultural context in which I was playing it, I feel; both III and Vice City were games I played while I was at university, so I also associate them with drunken nights out with friends that ended with collapsing back to my place to play either of those games until ugly o'clock in the morning. This is probably another reason San Andreas didn't resonate as hard, thinking about it; by the time that game came out, we'd all finished university, and thus we were no longer spending several nights a week around one other's houses playing video games together.

I never finished Grand Theft Auto IV, and never even tried its DLC. I thought about trying it again on more than one occasion, but I could just never really muster up the motivation for it. I don't know what it was; it just… didn't click with me at all, for some reason.

By the time Grand Theft Auto V first came out — which, let's not forget, was thirteen fucking years ago — I felt I was ready to try again, though. The new three-protagonist structure sounded interesting, and the online mode sounded intriguing, too. I gave it a go. I finished the single-player story. I had what I would describe as a moderately good time with that PS3 version, but it didn't have that magic for me. It felt too self-consciously edgy, like it was trying desperately to be taken seriously, but also wanted to combine that with the over-the-top satire that the previous entries had incorporated, and it just didn't really work for me. And all the fluff in it was… cool, I guess, but most of it felt like it was just there for the sake of it, rather than in an attempt to make a better game.

Online was even worse. Aside from the fact it just flat-out didn't work for quite a long time on console after release, the few times I tried later it on PC (I bought the PC version on deep discount later to play with friends more easily, as they didn't have consoles) were such overwhelmingly negative experiences that I had absolutely zero desire to spend any more time in it than I "had" to. And I didn't "have" to spend any time in it whatsoever.

What was so bad? Flagrant cheating, with nothing being done about it. Behaviour that went beyond the simple antagonism the game is built around, into malicious attempts to spoil other people's fun. Load times that were approximately sixteen years long. The complete inability to form a "party" with your friends, making it near-impossible to stay together between individual "events". And, woven into the very fabric of the experience, pay-to-win microtransactions.

Don't get me wrong, I had a few good times in Grand Theft Auto V's online mode, but those only really happened when we had a private friends-only session and just pissed about a bit. I won't deny that doing things like impromptu bicycle races across mountainous countryside, with one of us driving an enormous truck instead, were very enjoyable. Stepping into a public game, however, provided some of the most miserable online experiences I think I've ever had.

And then, of course, Grand Theft Auto V just would not fucking go away. It came to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Then it came again to PlayStation 5 and Xbox XBOX or whatever they're called now. More and more guff kept being added to the online mode, all in the name of getting people to pony up the cash for those odious "Shark Cards", because playing the game normally in order to earn your way to rewards was, very obviously, a chump's game.

I got to the point where I actively resented the sight of Grand Theft Auto V. It felt like it had become everything the series had once satirised, and worse. I had no desire to play it ever again.

I tried a few other Rockstar games along the way, too, and the only one of them that clicked with me was Bully, a post-San Andreas game that switched gears by placing you in the role of a teenager at a school in a small town, rather than a hardened criminal in a huge conurbation. I didn't enjoy Red Dead Redemption at all — at least partly because I've never found Westerns to be appealing as a genre — and have felt no inclination whatsoever to really explore the company's broader output since. (Max Payne was good, mind, though I've never really thought of those as "Rockstar games")

Grand Theft Auto VI is frustrating to me because it's being hyped up as some great Second Coming of Christ, to such a degree that game developers and publishers putting out games that are not Grand Theft Auto competitors in the slightest are terrified of releasing even vaguely near it. This, to me, just seems counter-productive; while I'm sure a lot of people are going to buy and play Grand Theft Auto VI on release day, there are plenty of people out there, I'm sure, who feel just like I do — sick to death of this goddamn series, and not looking forward to the inevitable flood of nothing but GTA VI articles we're going to get on the two and a half remaining video game journalism websites for months after it releases. Those people are going to want to play literally anything else on November 19th!

I'm pissed because not only am I sick of the sight of Grand Theft Auto, I'm also furious at how they're clearly exploiting the public with the pricing, garbage not-actually-a-physical-release and bullshit like locking in-game stores behind a $20 more expensive premium edition. I'm furious because people are still going to buy it and reward this nonsense, and no-one will learn a goddamn thing from it. It is the absolute worst example of the excesses of the top end of today's video game industry, and it's going to get away with it because it's "the most-anticipated video game ever".

And this, of course, is to say nothing of Rockstar's union-busting activities that they're currently fighting a legal battle over. But I'll leave that for people who understand such things better to discuss.

I'm aware that me having a little rant here is going to change nothing, and this odious game is going to sell gangbusters when it comes out. But I feel a bit better having said my piece now. And, outside of the game doing anything even more egregious than the shit that has been announced today, this is probably the last time I will mention it, or even think about it — and I'm certainly not going to try and stop anyone who has actually been looking forward to it from enjoying it.

I might silently judge you a bit, though.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 747: Grand Theft Auto VI can eat my ass appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

We have long since reached a point where it is not particularly cost-effective to start taking an interest in modern gaming if you are not already involved in the overall ecosystem and thus resigned to vast swathes of your monthly pay packet disappearing on your chosen hobby. Sure, you can get away with a somewhat lower-end mini PC if all you want to play is relatively small-scale indie games — but even those lower-end mini PCs are going up in price nowadays. Therefore, it is worthwhile looking at more cost-effective options for enjoying video games — even if the video games you will be enjoying are a few years old. Good games are still good years after they're released, you know! So here's my personal recommendations on that front.

Evercade

Of course I'm going to recommend Evercade because I work for them, but the reason I work for them is because I was all-in on the idea of the system from day one. A new, affordable system with a focus on retro gaming that provides officially licensed physical releases of classic games from home consoles, computers and arcade machines? Regardless of if I'd ever managed to secure employment with Blaze, makers of the Evercade, I would have been a "full setter" from day one — indeed, when the original handheld released, I immediately took advantage of the "All-In" bundle to get the first 10 cartridges included with the system.

Why recommend something like Evercade when emulation and other options exist — some of which we'll talk about in just a moment? Well, that "officially licensed" part is important. The current state of the games industry may appear to be teetering on the brink of unsustainability, but that doesn't mean people who enjoy video games want the whole thing to collapse. It would be rather nice if we could recover from this situation we're currently experiencing — and one way to help that come about is to support officially licensed rereleases of classic games, updated to play nice with modern audio-visual equipment, particularly televisions. On top of that, Evercade also plays host to physical releases of a lot of "modern retro" titles — games originally designed with vintage hardware in mind, but developed in recent years.

Many of the rights holders of these old games are also game companies that exist in the modern sector, and so throwing your support behind retro rereleases that don't require turbo nutter ninja bastard hardware to run is one way of helping ensure we still have a healthy video game economy whenever the AI bubble finally bursts and — hopefully — hardware prices start to settle back to what we have previously thought of as "normal".

Plus the physical nature of Evercade collecting allows you to rediscover the fun of having a shelf full of games to pick from, rather than a boring old list of downloads on your PC, many of which you scroll past without even noticing every single day.

MiSTer

Evercade is great, but there are some classic games that are never, ever going to get a rerelease for one reason or another — be it the rights holders being unwilling to put them out again, more complex licensing situations (such as video games based on movies, or which feature licensed music, vehicles or actors' likenesses) or some other reason entirely. For those situations, that's where what I would describe as more "community-focused" solutions come into play — as a general concept, this covers emulation, but I would specifically call out the MiSTer project as being a particularly worthwhile investment in these peculiar times.

For the unfamiliar, MiSTer is a platform based on "FPGA" (Field Programmable Gate Array), which is a technology I have absolutely no understanding of whatsoever, save for the fact that it effectively allows a device to recreate the way another piece of hardware would have worked in the past, not through simulation in software (which is how emulation works), but through a reconfigurable chip that basically "pretends" to be the old system. Some describe it as "hardware emulation"; all you really need to know is that, under most circumstances, it results in the most authentic recreation of a classic console, home computer or arcade cabinet possible, particularly if you happen to have an old CRT television hanging around that you can hook it up to. (Never fear if you don't, however; one of the core concepts of MiSTer from the outset was to provide a relatively straightforward means of enjoying classic "hardware" on modern displays, and the platform has a variety of built-in and fully customisable visual filters that allow you to recreate the CRT "look" if you so desire.)

MiSTer is a project you can build yourself, but it's actually probably more cost-effective these days to go for a pre-built solution such as Heber's Multisystem 2 (pictured above, which I use) and Taki Udon's SuperStation One. You will also need to add some form of storage to whatever setup you go for, which is likely to be the expensive bit these days; however, it's a one-off expense, and you can look at it as a lump sum you are spending on your own entertainment, rather than buying a bunch of individual things piecemeal. Tot up how much you've spent on individual games in the last year or so, and an SSD probably won't seem quite so expensive.

MiSTer requires a bit of setting up, including installing the actual software on the device to make it work, and then loading up your storage medium of choice with games — which, of course, you will have to "procure" yourself. For everything from the earliest games consoles right up to PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and Saturn, however, a MiSTer is all you need for… honestly probably enough games to last you the rest of your life.

Why do I recommend this and not investing in some classic hardware? Several reasons. One, classic hardware is prone to failure. Two, the games for classic hardware are often ludicrously expensive these days thanks to all the arseholes who have bought them as "investments" rather than to enjoy them — and you paying £400 for a copy of Buggy Run on Sega Master System doesn't help anyone other than the person you're foolish enough to hand over those notes to; the original creators certainly don't see a penny of that money! And three, getting classic hardware working on modern displays can be a bit of a pain… or at least demand you invest further expenses in a decent scaler.

Sixth- and seventh-generation consoles

If you have the cash, I would recommend investing in, at the very least, an Xbox 360. This platform has a vast library of excellent games available, many of which can be bought for not very much money at all, and doesn't require any faffing around to get working on a modern TV. You may also wish to consider a PlayStation 3, as there are a number of exclusives on both platforms — plus a few cases where either the 360 or PS3 version is just plain better for one reason or another.

After that, a Nintendo Wii or Wii U is well worth considering. The Wii U, while mocked in its lifetime for its small library of games, has some absolute bangers, plus it is backwards compatible with the Wii, which has a vast library of excellent games, many of which can, again, be picked up for not very much money at all. Wii U is an HD console that can be connected to a modern TV, but the original Wii is a standard-definition console, though it can still be hooked up to a modern TV via component cables for a 480p "Enhanced Definition" picture. If you don't have component inputs on your TV, you will probably want to run an original Wii through a scaler, as composite or SCART inputs on modern HDTVs — if they even have them any more, which I'm sure some models don't — are complete cack.

Speaking of standard definition, this brings us onto the other worthwhile investment: a PlayStation 2. Again, you can actually run one of these through component cables — and even get an actual high-definition signal with a few very specific games — but you will probably want to also grab yourself a scaler if you take your PS2 gaming seriously. And you should take your PS2 gaming seriously, as the system plays host to one of the richest, most diverse libraries of any system ever released, with titles ranging from bargain bin puzzlers to sprawling epic, cinematic affairs — and some of the best RPGs ever created. While the latter can command high prices these days, many PS2 games — and good ones! — can be picked up for not very much money, making it easy to build a library of stuff that will keep you busy for a good long while.

If you're feeling flush, an original Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube are worthwhile investments, as both have some nice exclusives and in the case of multiplatform games, Xbox and/or Gamecube versions are often superior to their PS2 counterparts. Do note, however, that original Xboxes sometimes need a bit of maintenance, and Gamecube games tend to be significantly more expensive than equivalent games on other platforms from the same period. Also be aware that the earlier models of Wii also play Gamecube games, so you may not even need to buy a separate Gamecube if you're lucky enough to track down one of those. (You can tell if you have one of those by if it has a removable panel with Gamecube controller ports underneath.)

Let's price a starter setup as outlined above from a hardware perspective:

£ 89.99 - Evercade VS-R
£264.00 - MiSTer Multisystem 2 (analogue-compatible model)
£ 47.99 - 512GB microSD card (price from Amazon 22/6/2026)
£110.00 - Xbox 360 250GB "E" model (unboxed from CEX 22/6/2026)
£ 65.00 - Nintendo Wii (unboxed from CEX 22/6/2026)
=======
£576.98

About half the price of the top-end Steam Machine, and between that lot, you should have access to more than enough games to keep you busy for a very long time indeed — and no need to spend half your life complaining about derivative triple-A trend-chasing, microtransactions, mandatory 50GB updates, lengthy install processes and shoehorned-in multiplayer modes.

Plus if you have friends over, they'll think your setup is super cool. And if they don't, question whether they really were your friends in the first place.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 745: Cost-effective gaming in 2026 appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This will, in its own curious way, reflect what happened in 1983, where a significant portion of the game-playing world — the UK and Europe, notably — were blissfully unaware of the problems the broader games business were suffering, because they were enjoying the fruits of a thriving cottage games industry. Here in the UK, we had no idea a "crash" was happening across the pond because we were all cheerfully buying £1.99 Mastertronic tapes from our local corner shop.

Something's gotta give, though, because the relentless torrent of shit that is coming out from shareholder-beholden companies — particularly with regard to the odiousness that is generative AI — is completely unsustainable. And we've reached a point where all but the most ardent bootlickers are feeling more and more emboldened to criticise what's going on — though sadly this also coincides with a period where thousands of people are being laid off and games aren't actually getting any better.

Take this statement attributed to Sony, posted on Bluesky earlier today:

This is a complete nothing of a statement! It says nothing! It gives precisely no examples of how AI "improves productivity", "drives efficiency, personalisation and customer value at scale" and "unleashes the creativity of Sony Interactive Entertainment's studios"! It is five paragraphs that explain nothing and say nothing, but which exist purely to, supposedly, placate shareholders who, apparently, have absolutely no functioning brain cells between them and desire nothing more than every stupid fucking company to follow every stupid fucking trend in existence, even when they are demonstrably, actively harmful and just plain shit!

I am mildly heartened that a number of developers are starting to speak up a bit more about this. There's a good piece on Aftermath on the subject, and another on gamesindustry.biz. There are still the annoying sycophants in every single comments section who all parrot the exact same lines about "the genie being out of the bottle" and "get used to AI or get left behind", but there is, I feel, increasing resistance to that side of things. A lot of smaller-scale developers are also making a good name for themselves by saying, out loud, and prominently, that they do not use generative AI at any point in their development process. Good!

The utterly dumbshit thing about corpos like Sony sucking Sam Altman and Wario Amodei's robophalluses is that there is not a single documented instance of a project involving generative AI being well-received by either press or public. I'm not even convinced that it's actually what shareholders want to see. The otherwise excellent Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was soured for a lot of folks (including me) when it was found that they had used generative AI for "placeholder" (sure) assets, and likewise for the apparently also very good The Alters. New projects coming out that are revealed to be using generative AI are subject to mass shunnings and censure from press and public alike — and rightly so. It is starting to feel less and less desirable to have any involvement whatsoever in the top end of today's games industry — a once-exciting, vibrant place — and more and more understandable when people choose to focus their time and attention on both small, independent projects and retro titles.

On top of that, the very generative AI that all these shareholder-appeasing corpos are rushing to use for no real specified purpose is becoming increasingly responsible for pricing people out of games and tech! No good having "volume and diversity of content" (ugh) if no-one can fucking afford the devices to play it on, is there?

All this can easily be avoided! We have been making games for a very long time without the use of a glorified Autocorrect trained on stolen data! I find it near-impossible to believe that every game developer has suddenly completely forgotten how to do things the way we've been doing them for many years at this point, just because you can tell "Claude" to churn you out some spaghetti code using conversational English. And yet. And yet.

I don't know exactly what a "crash" is going to look like in this instance, but I feel like it's not going to be pretty — and the potential knock-on effects concern me somewhat. Like, if games consoles go away — and with the current tech pricing situation, that's a real risk — what does that then mean for people who like to collect games, and for the long-term archival of games using physical media? There are so many potentially terrible things that could happen that I don't feel like the world of video games has adequately prepared for, and it's really quite worrying.

Still, if the worst comes to the worst, I have shelves full of games, many of which are complete-on-disc or complete-on-cart, and a fully-loaded MiSTer. I could, at this point, duck out of "modern gaming" at any time — and with each passing month, it feels more and more like I might end up doing that.

To pre-empt the inevitable comments from weirdly aggressive generative AI-boosting corpo bootlickers: fuck off; you are not welcome here, if the above doesn't make that abundantly clear already, and your comments will just be deleted, so you may as well just not bother. Hope that helps!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 742: Crash and burn appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This is, inevitably, not particularly convenient or helpful, either for yourself or for people who are, for one reason or another, depending on you and your input into various aspects of their own lives, be it personal, professional or a bit of both. I unfortunately do not have a good answer for how to just "get over it" at times like this, since, as you have probably noticed from recent posts, I am slap bang in the middle of one such period right now. And I will doubtless continue to be so for quite some time. I apologise in advance to anyone I don't reply to, am rude to, have no patience for or for whom I am unable to complete a requested task. It's not you, it's very much me, but I do at least hope you have some understanding for what I am contending with.

One of the things I find most difficult about times like this is, as I talked about the other day, getting other people to understand the sheer depth of the things you are feeling, and how all-encompassing they can feel. I feel like not everyone's brain presses that big tempting "pause" button when something like this happens; some folks can, I suspect, handle things a lot better than I can. Or, no, that's perhaps not fair to myself. Some folks, I suspect, handle things differently to how I do. Regardless of self-deprecation, I envy them somewhat; the way in which they can allow their life to continue moving forward during times of great uncertainty and emotional turmoil.

Or perhaps they're just better at hiding it than I am. Perhaps they're feeling exactly the same as I do in private, but are better at "masking" the way they feel when they are around others. Putting on a brave face, stiff upper lip, that sort of thing — but breaking down in tears when they're off the clock, staring into space, feeling despair at simply not knowing what to do or how to feel.

At times like this, as I say, it can be difficult to engage with the things that would normally bring you joy, because sometimes it can feel like taking hold of a feeling of transient joy is somehow "wrong" or "disrespectful" to the thing you are uncertain, upset, sad or angry about — even if you know that it's a momentary distraction that you probably need for the sake of your own mental health. The other side of this is that when you're experiencing those feelings of great uncertainty and emotional turmoil, it can simply be difficult to focus on something that, under normal circumstances, would bring you joy, but requires a certain amount of concentration and engagement.

This is an exceedingly long-winded way of saying that I have not gone back to Final Fantasy XI since Oliver's disappearance, despite the fact that it was bringing me great joy, and would probably be an excellent distraction right now. But it just doesn't feel quite right to be going back to that just yet, which is what led me to reach for something from my shelf this evening that does not particularly require continuous concentration, focus and engagement — or, perhaps more accurately, demands a different kind of continuous concentration, focus and engagement; a kind that, when your brain is all a-churnin' with great uncertainty and emotional turmoil, you can still get along with.

For me, this is where video games that are entirely mechanics-focused come in. I am generally someone who prefers playing things with strong stories, but there are times when something that is pure mechanics is exactly what the doctor ordered. These types of experiences demand a different kind of focus to works that want you to concentrate on narrative, themes and characterisation, and they can make excellent distractions from periods of great uncertainty and emotional turmoil.

The absolute ideal form of this type of experience is something that, when you reach a "fail" state, you can jump right back into with minimal fuss, ad infinitum if necessary. In technical video game terms, the best implementation of this is a game where, when you hit a "Game Over" or equivalent, you can just press a button and be immediately playing again, ideally without any waiting around for load times or anything like that.

This evening, I have been playing some of the Atari Recharged games, which fit the bill perfectly for this sort of thing. I've had lovely boxed versions of these on my shelves for ages, but still haven't yet got around to exploring all of them fully. This evening, I have been playing Asteroids Recharged and Breakout Recharged, and they have very much been having the desired effect.

For the unfamiliar, the Atari Recharged games are modern reimaginings of classic Atari arcade games. The ones I have played all have the same structure: they have an infinite "arcade" mode, where you simply play to survive as long as possible and attain a high score, and a "challenge" mode, which consists of a large number of predefined, standalone, self-contained levels, each of which challenges you to accomplish a particular objective, often under difficult circumstances.

Both of these are excellent for calming the storm of a turbulent mind, as both function as I describe above: they demand concentration and focus without having to engage the part of your brain that deals with pesky things like words, subtext, narrative themes and characterisation, and they allow you to quickly and easily try again if you mess up. And you will mess up a lot more than you win — particularly in the arcade mode, where there is literally no way to win other than beating your own high scores, or those of people you have set your sights on from the online leaderboards.

In a way, they are "mindless", but I don't mean that in a denigratory way. There's something primal and instinctual that happens to you when you play games like this, and it leaves no room for abstract emotions. You'll feel enjoyment, satisfaction, frustration and even anger, but allow yourself to become one with the experience and you will, at least for an hour or two, forget about those feelings of great uncertainty and emotional turmoil.

It is important to give yourself an escape hatch; a lifeline. When your brain decides to put your life on pause, it often isn't healthy. It might cause you to not take as good care of yourself as you should. You might not eat properly. You might find yourself pushing away people who want to help — or at the very least want you to open up about what's wrong. It can be easy to immerse yourself in those feelings of great uncertainty and emotional turmoil; an all-encompassing, opaque black bubble of misery from which it can be very difficult to escape if you allow it to form completely.

So take those moments, as little and fleeting as they might be, and step out of that darkness for a moment. It's not a betrayal of the things you are upset about; it is allowing yourself a moment's peace, preventing you from being consumed completely, and perhaps giving you the strength to be able to pull yourself out of the mire, little by little.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 739: Occupying yourself while your life is on hold appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I think I'm probably going to make a video along these lines sometime soon — although my prior video on the announcement of The400 Mini a while back covers a lot of the points I'd want to cover — but it's on my mind today, so that's what we're talking about today.

One of the reasons I want to talk about Atari 8-bit computers is because I don't feel they get nearly enough respect. No, they were by no means as popular as the Commodore 64 and Spectrum — the former of which is the subject of a cover feature in Retro Gamer magazine this month — but I also feel like they had a significantly stronger foothold in the market than other "failed" micros from the era. Not only that, but they are historically very significant for a number of reasons, some of which I'll try and outline today.

This is going to be a bit of a stream-of-consciousness sort of probably autistic infodump, because I'm just banging this out as I feel like it. If and when I do decide to make a video about all this, there will probably be a bit more structure, research, that sort of thing. Like I say, this was just rattling around in my head today, though, so I wanted to at least get some thoughts down on paper. So here it is.

For the unfamiliar, the Atari 8-bit range consists of several models:

• The Atari 400, which released in 1978, and initially features 8 kilobytes of RAM, though later revisions bumped this up a bit. This was marketed in some areas as a games machine, as it was the cheaper of the two models to release in 1978, had four joystick ports and sported a flat, supposedly spill-proof membrane keyboard to make it suitable for "family" use.
• The Atari 800, which released alongside the 400 in 1978, and was positioned as a more "serious" machine. It had a "normal" keyboard, user-upgradable RAM (up to a maximum of 48 kilobytes) and two cartridge slots instead of one (though there were very few releases that took advantage of this) — and it cost considerably more.
• The Atari 1200XL was the first step in a refresh of the Atari 8-bit line in 1983, intended to replace the 800. It came with 64 kilobytes of RAM, a completely redesigned case, built-in self-test features and a rather nice keyboard. It was also much too expensive and had a number of issues, causing Atari to pull it from sale before long, and to not release it in PAL territories at all.
• The Atari 800XL (pictured above) was a do-over of the 1200XL project. It also had 64 kilobytes of RAM, the newly designed case (now not quite so deep), built-in self-test features and lovely keyboard, but also added built-in BASIC to the mix along with revisions to the operating system. It was Atari's best-selling 8-bit home computer.
• The Atari 600XL was a cost-reduced version of the 800XL, which had an even slimmer case and only 16 kilobytes of RAM. With the 800XL replacing the 800, this was effectively the replacement for the 400, but it did not sell very well compared to its big brother.
• The Atari 130XE was launched in 1985, after Jack Tramiel took over Atari, and was designed to look like a "little brother" to the 16-bit Atari ST. It featured 128 kilobytes of RAM, new revisions of the operating system and BASIC and a new case design, but otherwise didn't bring anything significantly new to the table. It is a nice machine, though, and my Atari 8-bit of choice.
• The Atari 65XE was essentially identical to the 130XE, only with 64 kilobytes of RAM instead of 128.
• The Atari XEGS was a 65XE in a console-style case with a detachable keyboard. It was positioned primarily as a games console, even more explicitly than the 400 back in 1978, but was a fully functional computer that would work with all Atari 8-bit peripherals.

Broadly speaking, these models are all cross-compatible with one another, aside from obvious exceptions such as programs that need a particular amount of RAM to run properly. There are a few compatibility issues between very early pieces of software that were designed for the 400 and 800 and the later XL/XE models, but these can usually be got around by using a "translator" program to temporarily load in an older version of the operating system, and the Atari community at large has also been hard at work patching many games to work universally on all Atari 8-bit systems.

Like most other 8-bit computers, the Atari 8-bit had three means of loading software: ROM cartridge, cassette tape or 5.25" floppy disk. ROM cartridges are incredibly simple: plug them in, turn on the machine and the software is there, ready to go. These were primarily used for games, particularly in the early days of the platform, but there are some pieces of utility or productivity software that run from cartridge, too. Notably, using a cartridge effectively allows the ROM within to "extend" the Atari's capabilities; a good example of this is the SpartaDOS X package, which adds an MS-DOS style command line for manipulating files on floppy disks.

Cassette tapes were certainly used by Atari enthusiasts, but not to the same extent as on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum. The reason for this is that the tape loading system in the Atari 8-bit was significantly slower than on its main rivals, resulting in load times of half an hour or more for games that would take just a few minutes on other platforms. That said, the Atari 8-bit could make innovative use of the tape medium by playing back audio during a program — a good example of this is the Conversational Language series of packages, which teach French, German, Italian and Spanish through interactive lessons, with recorded speech coming straight off the tape and being played back through the TV speakers at the appropriate moments.

Instead, disk drive use was very popular. There were two main disk drives in the prime of the Atari 8-bit's lifespan: the original Atari 810, which followed the design language of the 400 and 800, and the Atari 1050, which was designed to fit in alongside a 600XL or 800XL setup. There was an even later XF551 drive, but this didn't really catch on for various reasons, and these drives are a lot harder to find today.

You connected a tape deck or disk drive to the Atari via its proprietary Serial Input/Output (SIO) port, and this brings us to one of the most historically significant things about the range: SIO was designed as a universal connector for all manner of different peripherals, not just media storage devices. Sound familiar? That's right; it's very much a precursor to modern USB; Joe Decuir, who created this architecture, holds patents on USB.

SIO had a few differences to modern USB, most notably the fact that devices could be daisy-chained together. This means that even though the system only had one SIO port, you could connect multiple devices simply by linking them together. Obviously this was dependent on the device in question having a suitable port — and not every device did — but in theory you could keep on linking as required, making it easy to have, for example, setups that used multiple disk drives, and even cassette and disk simultaneously if you so desired.

Using a disk drive with the Atari 8-bits required one extra step: the use of a Disk Operating System, or DOS. Atari made its own DOS that underwent several revisions over the lifespan of the Atari 8-bit models, and although closed source and distributed under a proprietary license agreement, it could be redistributed. Good job, too, because in order to actually boot something from disk, DOS needed to be loaded first. If you wanted to be able to save BASIC programs to disk, you also needed to boot DOS from disk before starting to write your program.

The most commonly seen versions of Atari's DOS from back in the day used a menu-driven interface that allowed various disk functions such as copying and deleting files as well as locking/protecting them, loading executable files that were not set up to automatically boot when turning the computer on, formatting disks and creating new DOS disks.

Programming on the Atari used, like most of its contemporaries, a dialect of BASIC. Unlike many other BASICs at the time, it is not a version of the popular Microsoft BASIC (although this was available) and thus had a number of its own unique Atari-specific commands. Carrying out many functions, particularly relating to graphics, that would require POKEs on other platforms could be done with dedicated commands on the Atari, but conversely Atari BASIC lacked the ability to create arrays in string variables. It was, on the whole, a well-liked language, and the two main Atari magazines of the era, Page 6 and Atari User (which later merged to become New Atari User), typically printed type-in listings for all manner of programs in every issue. Not just games, either; both magazines were keen to position the Atari computers as capable, multi-function devices that were far more than just sources of entertainment.

Other programming languages were, of course, available. Those keen to get their hands dirty could write programs using 6502 assembler, while as the years went by, speedy languages such as Action! and Turbo BASIC XL came along and offered compelling alternatives to the built-in or cartridge-based BASIC that was, for many, the foundation of programming on the Atari range. These languages could be compiled into executable binaries, too, meaning that an end user would not need a copy of the language to run a program written in it.

The Atari's audio-visual capabilities were very solid. The dual ANTIC and GTIA graphics chips offered hardware scrolling, built-in "player-missile" sprites, and a wealth of different graphics modes allowing various balances between memory usage, resolution and colour depth. The POKEY chip offered four-channel audio with a good amount of customisation — although not quite as flexible as the SID chip found in the Commodore 64. It also handled a lot of the Atari 8-bit's input/output, meaning the system has the charming feature of making blippity bloop sounds when loading and saving from/to disk or tape rather than the horrific screeching heard on other platforms.

And then we come to the games. While some of the high-profile software houses — notably outfits like Ocean, Imagine, Ultimate and suchlike — refused to support the Atari 8-bit, others, like Electronic Arts and Activision, did, at least in the early days, and the budget companies like Mastertronic, Atlantis, Zeppelin and Alternative had a good presence on the platform, too. The end result of this from a 2026 perspective is that the Atari 8-bit library is largely unique, with many titles not being found on any other platforms — and in the case of multiplatform affairs, the Atari release often being a particularly good version. (There are exceptions, of course; the Atari 8-bit versions of Action Biker and The Last V8 are woeful compared to the C64 releases.)

There's also the fact that a lot of games which went on to worldwide success on a variety of platforms often originated on Atari 8-bit. All-time classics like Boulder Dash, M.U.L.E., Miner 2049'er and Spelunker debuted on Atari before spreading to other platforms, and esteemed creators like Archer Maclean were really able to make the system sing with games like Dropzone.

The only thing the library is lacking compared to its more successful 8-bit counterparts is a library of solid arcade conversions from the years following the initial early '80s "golden age"; those early '80s titles are well-covered, however, with excellent versions of Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Pole Position, Qix and plenty more — and a wealth of "unofficial" clones, too.

So why doesn't this system get anywhere near the love and attention that the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum do? I honestly don't really know, because although the platform undoubtedly sold considerably less than both of its main rivals, I don't think one can in any respect call it a "failure". Its longest-lasting magazine published its final issue in 1998, for heaven's sake — and said magazine was including material for the Atari 8-bit right up until that very final issue. Not only that, the modern "homebrew" scene is incredibly active and vibrant to this day, with some truly amazing new games being released for the platform on a regular basis, along with some excellent ports of C64 and Spectrum games that never made it to Atari back in the day.

I would love to see the Atari 8-bit get more acknowledgement. There are some YouTubers who do give it its dues — Kim Justice is a good example — but I do wish the field of "gaming history" would, more broadly, pay attention to the Atari 8-bit: a platform that still has a lot to offer, which is a hell of a lot of fun to have been involved with since its original inception, and which is dead easy to explore today with solutions like Altirra for software emulation, and the excellent Atari800 core for MiSTer if you're an FPGA person.

Still, that's a big reason my YouTube channel exists. So I will continue to champion the system how I can — and at least then I know that I have done my part in remembering this wonderful platform and the many amazing journeys it has taken me on over the years.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 723: The Atari 8-bit doesn't get its dues appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

It's been a lot of fun thus far. I'm about 80 hours deep into the game, and I haven't really felt particularly "roadblocked" at any point. There have been two separate occasions where I have had help from higher-level players — once to open the "Three Mage Gate" I mentioned a few posts back, and once to help me with the fight against Siren as part of the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel series of missions that run parallel to all the main stories — but for the most part, I have successfully beaten and bashed my way through the game as a solo player using the computer-controlled "Trust" party members.

I thought I had reached a roadblock towards the end of the Rise of the Zilart storyline where you are presented with a chain of five difficult boss battles, and I was having real difficulty with a couple of them. As I'm playing a Warrior, I have been working on the assumption that I should be the main "tank", you see, and thus trying my best to ensure all enemies fixate their attention on my while my Trusts repeatedly punch them in the buttocks. This is, after all, the way things are in Final Fantasy XIV, even though mechanically the two games are otherwise quite different.

However, what I discovered in these difficult fights (the "Ark Angels" fights, to any FFXI veterans) is that being the sole human player and the main tank is not always desirable. Y'see, some high-level enemies have the ability to Charm you, and when that happens all your Trusts get unsummoned and the fight effectively resets. It's an instant "kill", in other words, and I really thought this was going to roadblock me.

Then I thought about things a bit, and wondered what might happen if I let one of the Trusts handle the tanking instead. Wouldn't you know it, those fights suddenly went much more smoothly. I could keep dealing damage — which, besides tanking, is the other thing FFXI Warrior is good at — while Trust-y Valaineral the Paladin took the brunt of everything the boss threw at a single target, including that pesky Charm. And, because I also had Kupipi the White Mage and King Of Hearts the Red Mage in my party, they cleansed that status off him pretty quickly. I only really came close to failing in one of the fights, where everyone got Silenced and Valaineral got knocked down because no-one could heal him. Thankfully, this happened late enough in the fight that the remaining party members, including me, were able to finish the job.

By contrast, the actual final boss of Rise of the Zilart was very easy indeed. Granted, I was probably a few levels higher than "intended" for this encounter — Final Fantasy XI isn't particularly rigorous about locking stuff to particular level restrictions, particularly in the main story sequences — but it was still pretty straightforward. Fun, though; it was satisfying to finally bring down a "big bad" who had been taunting me for some time.

Now I'm on to the Chains of Promathia expansion, which a lot of longtime players seem to think is one of the best bits. It makes the curious decision to base the early hours of its story around the level 30 mark, rather than assuming you would be at the level you're probably at around the conclusion of Rise of the Zilart — 75+ — but I assume that things ramp up pretty quickly, as the official "content guide" on the Final Fantasy XI website recommends the expansion as an activity for level 75+ players.

I'm really glad I've done this! I'm going to write a big, detailed article about my experiences over on MoeGamer when I'm finally done with everything I want to do in the game, but for now, my feelings are that, in terms of gameplay, progression and a general sense of adventure, this is actually one of the very best Final Fantasy games. Yes, it is the very epitome of a "guide dang-it" game, in which you will almost certainly not get very far without looking some stuff up, but the moment-to-moment gameplay, the overall sense of progression and the fact that it feels like a Final Fantasy game, arguably a lot more so than XIV, has really left me with a big grin on my face. I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the game has to offer.

I have played pretty much all day, though, so I should probably stop for now, though, right? Probably…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 717: Putting down the Zilart appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Sometimes I don't know how to feel about something because my moral superiors have not yet made a super long video. They don't always make a video about the thing I need, though. Like, I don't know if someone is still bad or if they've been exonerated. Since we don't trust any structure that would provide exoneration, and objectivity is illusory, since the law is merely another arena to sift power dynamics anyway, my guess is that their good opinion, once lost, is lost forever. Speaking of power dynamics, It must be neat to have the reins of a parallel legal system whose norms kaleidoscopically shift at a rate of one million shibboleths per second. The main issue is that it's not clear which games I'm allowed to buy. All I can do – all anyone can do – is spin very quickly in place while refreshing YouTube for the next sermon. I'm currently ablur.

Tycho is specifically referring to the hoohah over Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, the recent new game from ZA/UM, the company behind the exceedingly brilliant Disco Elysium, and a company mired in controversy for the way it subsequently treated the actual people who made Disco Elysium. I don't really know much more about it than that, and to be perfectly honest, I don't really give enough of a shit to look into it further. I'm sorry, I just don't.

You see, as you might expect in such a situation, moral grandstanding over the way ZA/UM has behaved in the past has been overshadowing any meaningful discussion of Zero Parades itself, with the reviewers who took it on its own terms and gave it a positive assessment — apparently it's very good! — getting lambasted by people who think they are The Most Correct Person in the Room.

The phenomenon Tycho is talking about is the disconnect one eventually starts to feel when constantly confronted by this: the situation where you want to talk about how much you like something that you have taken on its own terms, divorced from "context" — regardless of whether this was a deliberate move, or just because your particular life and social circumstances meant you had never come into contact with any "controversy" — but find yourself having to bite your tongue, because you know it's not "acceptable" to like the thing for one reason or another.

I'm not even talking about particularly controversial material here — like, even the most perverted hentai connoisseur knows when not to bring up his collection of Rias Gremory boob bouncing gifs — but rather, situations like we have here, where an entity that is tangentially connected to the thing in question is deemed to have done something so unconscionably unacceptable that it taints anything and everything associated with itself, regardless of whether the thing itself is any good or not, and regardless of whether the people who actually made the thing had anything to do with the controversy.

A lot of this stuff spreads via social media and, as Tycho says, via video platforms like YouTube and TikTok. A lot of people look to "influencers" (ugh) as opinion leaders, and wait to learn whether it's "acceptable" in the eyes of someone they believe in before even considering engaging with it. Essentially it's a form of cognitive surrender; they willingly give up their own ability to make their mind up about something in favour of blindly following everything their opinion leader of choice says and does. And this sort of person tends to hold a grudge for a very long time indeed; as Tycho says, it's exceedingly rare for anyone branded with a scarlet letter to be exonerated, while the reverse is also true: someone who has been a beloved figure for years can be quickly turned on, torn to shreds and then left to rot, never to be forgiven and never to regain their former regard, regardless of whether or not they clearly make an effort to make amends for past wrongs.

Honestly, at this point it's exceedingly tiresome. There are certain people on Bluesky I've had to mute just because their constant response to people Just Enjoying The Thing is to bring up the controversy du jour and, in many cases, cast exceedingly unflattering and negative aspersions on the people who continue to Just Enjoy The Thing. In just the last week it's happened not only with Zero Parades, but also with Forza Horizon 6, and I'm sure there will be plenty more. There have certainly been plenty of prior examples, including numerous instances of the "we will never forgive them" situation.

Look, I get it. In this revolting, shitty world we live in, it's nice to think that you have some principles and that you're willing to stand up for them. Everyone should have at least a few issues that they're willing to stand up and be counted on. But there comes a point where you're just being a tedious scold at people who are simply trying to derive some joy out of existence, and who really do not have the time or energy to give a shit about every single little issue in the world, particularly when the issues that you supposedly care about are in the extreme periphery of the thing they are trying to enjoy — and seemingly not even directly connected at all, to the average person who is not huffing Internet fumes 25 hours a day.

I'm sorry, but it is just like that. If you do try and give a shit about every single little issue in the world, you will quickly end up driving yourself insane, driving everyone who might have once been your friend away, and never, ever experiencing a day of happiness in your life ever again.

On top of that, if your idea of Being A Good Person is scolding random strangers on Bluesky rather than actually getting out into the world and making some sort of meaningful difference to the lives of people who need it, then you might not actually be A Good Person. You just want people to believe that you are.

Life is too short for that. So if you want to play Zero Parades, I don't care. If you want to play Forza Horizon 6, I don't care. If you want to boycott everything ZA/UM and Microsoft ever put out, I don't really care, either. But if you start actively getting in the way of people who simply want an escape from the shittiness of life in 2026 — or to build a warm, kind community of people who want a collective escape from the shittiness of life in 2026 — then I'm sorry, but I don't really want to know you.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 712: Cognitive surrender appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

You get a quest, it will inevitably involve finding some object that is a relatively low-chance drop from a very specific monster that is deep in part of a dungeon that is exceedingly inconvenient to get to.

You reach the level cap, you have to complete one of these quests every five levels until you reach 99 — though thankfully you only have to do this once per character, not once per job.

You get your "subjob", to add abilities from a second job to your main one, you have to level that as well as your main job — though only half as much, since it caps at half the level of your main job.

There are times when all this feels a bit wearisome, particularly when compared to Final Fantasy XIV, which at times feels like it's keen to take as much "friction" out of the entire process as possible. But if you think about Final Fantasy XI in different terms — not as a "theme park"-style MMO, but simply as a more traditional RPG — it makes a lot more sense, particularly now you don't have to be dependent on other people for a lot of the "main scenario" side of things.

Dungeons in Final Fantasy XIV are spectacular affairs, but they are theme park rides — completely linear, the same every time. Dungeons in Final Fantasy XI are much more elaborate: maze-like structures filled with dead ends, hidden secrets and varied encounters with monsters. The complete lack of signposting for quest-critical items — usually this involves finding something marked "???" when you target it — means that you have to actually explore these places thoroughly… or look at a guide, of course. But the longer I play, the more interesting the prospect of just exploring becomes. And the more I feel like the game has been designed around this.

If you look at a lot of Final Fantasy XI guides online, you will inevitably see a focus on levelling as fast as possible, then steamrollering your way through all the content. But the way I've been playing, it feels a lot more natural and a lot more like it's the way it was intended to be played. I've had a couple of instances where I've had to sneak around monsters much tougher than me to find a useful item, but for the most part I've found that if I treat the game like a regular, offline RPG — that is to say, fighting my way through monsters as I proceed through a field area or dungeon rather than avoiding as many as possible — it means that progress comes naturally and without you feeling like you're having to make an inordinate amount of effort to achieve that progress. As a result, the game is fun rather than a chore.

There are still points where it feels like you are "roadblocked" in certain ways — right now I'm dealing with a particularly complicated main scenario mission that involves finding specific items in three specific dungeons, along with a level cap quest that is demanding much the same sort of thing — but only in terms of the ongoing narrative. In terms of actually playing the game and engaging with its mechanics, I feel like I'm constantly doing interesting stuff and seeing new places rather than just going through the motions.

I'm going to make it through this game! I'm excited to see where it goes! Now, if I can just find an Orcish Crest, a Quadav Crest and a Yagudo Crest, plus pieces of Magicite from their three respective bases, I should be good to go and beat up the Shadow Lord. So that's what I'm going to do today, I think.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 708: Proper adventuring appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

If you are unfamiliar with this stirring piece of music, here is the original:

The original lyrics run thus:

Beyond majestic mountains
Across the emerald dale
On march the ivory standard
United we prevail

From distant shores of Othard
To lakes of Aldenard
The light of mighty Garlemald
For e'er our guiding star

It continues in similarly "patriotic but built on stolen land" fashion after that. It's a whole thing. What you can hopefully tell from listening to the above, however, is that it's a song with a relatively simple melody line, and fairly simple rhythms. This makes it absolutely ideal for use when you are singing about something stupid and/or disgusting.

Please feel free to replay the above video, while singing the below words to it.

I'm going to take a dump now
I'm going to have a shit
I'm going to shoot poo out my arse
And fill the toilet up

I'm going to take a shit now
I'm going to have a dump
The poo will come right out my bum
And God, it really stinks

I laugh in the face of rhyming schemes. But there's something innately satisfying about having a big ol' dump and bellowing that at the top of your lungs in a deep baritone. I recommend you try it. Even if you have a high voice. I suspect a glass-shattering, vibrato-filled soprano will also fit the bill nicely.

I don't remember exactly when I discovered that The Garlean Territorial Anthem for Gyr Abania and Surrounding States: The Measure of our Reach was ideal for this purpose, but I find it very difficult to stop myself from doing this any time I am in the house by myself. I don't even have to actually be taking a shit to want to sing it. It just sort of comes out. There are other versions of the lyrics, too, mostly relating to bodily functions and/or ablutions, but I will keep those to myself. A girl's got to have a bit of mystery.

Naturally I do not do this when anyone else is present, because I would be absolutely mortified if anyone heard what I was doing and the words I was singing. And not just because I've always been rather self-conscious about my singing voice. I also generally make sure the windows are shut.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure why I'm admitting this right now. I just thought you might find it amusing.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 706: The Garlean Territorial Anthem goes with everything appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm enjoying the game a lot, though my desire to attempt it without a guide was a foolhardy endeavour. Final Fantasy XI was always designed with "community" in mind, and built on the assumption that said community would share information with one another and help each other out, and as such there are a lot of things it just doesn't tell you. It's a lot better in this regard than it used to be, primarily thanks to the "Records of Eminence" feature, which gives you a series of objectives to accomplish that can guide your progression, but you'll still often be given a mission that tells you to go to a particular zone and find something in that zone, with absolutely no indication whatsoever of exactly whereabouts in that zone the thing is to be found. There is no minimap and no quest marker feature in Final Fantasy XI, so you're either off to find a needle in a haystack yourself, or consult the community (which now, of course, also includes comprehensive wikis) and be able to focus your efforts a bit more.

There are still one or two roadblocks that require actual interaction with a human being. One of the missions for Windurst requires that you get through a door called the "Sealed Portal", which is colloquially known by the community as "Three Mage Gate". The reason for this is that the originally intended method of opening this door was to gather a party containing a white mage, a black mage and a red mage and get them to stand on the appropriate marks on the floor, which would open the door. This was subsequently updated to only require someone with the "Portal Charm" key item — which, naturally, you get just after the mission in which you would first need it — to make things marginally easier and less dependent on wrangling an entire group.

These aspects aside, though, the game has been eminently soloable so far, thanks to the Trust system. You're given some decent Trusts right from the get-go, and more are unlockable quite easily. There are some borderline overpowered ones available without too much difficulty, too, but with the number you get to add to your arsenal very quickly, you can pretty much build a party however you like to play, and use the characters you find most appealing. My only slight beef with the system is a narrative one; many of the Trusts you get early on are characters that you probably won't have met yet, and this makes it tricky to feel a sense of attachment to them. Because, in the context of Final Fantasy XI's story, Trust magic is dependent on you having a strong bond with a particular person, this feels a bit dissonant, but you soon learn to deal with it — and after a while, you'll be able to get together a party that feels like it consists entirely of "story" characters anyway.

It's definitely a very different sort of game to Final Fantasy XIV. It's not actually turn-based, but with its pacing it might as well be. It's not a game where you attacking requires you to be constantly pressing buttons to unleash combos, unlike its follow-up; instead, it's more about equipping your character well, ensuring they have good training in the skills they need to succeed at the challenges ahead of them, and approaching combat encounters carefully and thoughtfully. Sure, you "do less" on a moment-to-moment basis, but it's a different kind of satisfying to successfully clearing difficult encounters in Final Fantasy XIV; it's less about skill with the buttons and more about traditional RPG-style number crunching. I'm not saying either way is "better" — both games are very good at what they do — but it is interesting to note quite how different they are from one another now I'm deeper into XI than I've ever been.

My next big milestones for Final Fantasy XI will be breaking a couple of level cap barriers, and then completing the base story from the original game, which culminates in a big fight against the dreaded Shadow Lord. There's still a lot to do after that, though, and most folks seem to agree that things start getting really good story-wise after you've got through the base game's material. I'm looking forward to it — and at the rate I'm going, I should be getting through it at a decent pace, too.

I'm glad I finally decided to do this. Final Fantasy XI has kind of been a "white whale" for me in terms of completion, so I knew I just had to make the time to play it and do it properly. Now that I'm doing that, I'm having a really good time. I doubt I'll get too hardcore into its "endgame" stuff — my main priority is to beat the story, and after that I will probably return to XIV — but there is plenty to do just on the journey from 1 to 99. And that's absolutely fine with me!

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The post #oneaday Day 704: Vana'diel progress report appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Yes, it's H.E.R.O. by Activision! I was super-excited to help bring the Activision Collection cartridges to Evercade, as these are some of my all-time favourite 2600 games, and H.E.R.O. is a real classic. With this kind-of-sort-of series, I'm just gonna play whatever I damn well feel like on Evercade and just chat freeform and see what happens. Evercade and Chill, you see.

This is definitely the kind of video I enjoy making the most, because in some ways it helps me to feel a bit less lonely. I know that I'm talking "to myself" while I'm playing, but I'm also talking to anyone who's watching, and I've always said that my intention for this style of video is to provide an experience roughly akin to sitting down with a friend and playing something together. Consequently, I do my best to try and include the viewer in the things that I'm saying — and also not to assume knowledge, for those who are new to this stuff. Which, as time goes on, there are more and more people who fall into that category.

I've been wanting to get back to doing Evercade videos for a while, but it didn't feel quite "right" to be doing them while I was also handling the company's social media and stuff. Now I've thankfully left that side of my job in the dust, I feel I can get back to doing this sort of thing — which in its own way will hopefully benefit the community and the product, too. I mean, I have a miniscule audience, yes, but if just a few of those folks see something I cover and the fact it's on Evercade, then that's pretty cool.

The four videos I recorded yesterday are all Activision-related, because that's what I felt like playing at the time. As I say, this "series" will have no particular set structure or format aside from "I'm going to play whatever the hell I feel like from the Evercade library as it exists at the time of recording". I will have to be a teensy bit careful not to accidentally reveal any new carts before they're announced — I already have the next two cartridges that are being announced on the 15th, for example — but given that there's 80-something cartridges altogether and nearly 800 games on Evercade at this point, I'm not going to be running out of material any time soon.

So I hope you enjoy this series! It will hopefully be a fun, casual, laid-back, relaxing sort of series, both for me as a creator, and for you as someone watching this stuff. (I recommend falling asleep to my videos. I do it quite frequently.)

On that note, the weekend is almost over, so I think it's probably time for bed.

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The post #oneaday Day 702: Overcoming burnout and guilt appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I am also reminded that Final Fantasy XI is not a game for everyone. Specifically, it is not a game for the impatient, because there is a lot to do, and it takes quite a long time to do pretty much anything… except level up, now, which goes at a significantly more brisk pace than it did the first time I played it all those years ago.

But we're talking about a game where the ability to run slightly faster than normal is dependent on someone completing a long and difficult quest, it rolling a random chance of the "Swift Shoes" effect coming up, and then you healing to full and having a nice sit down for a couple of minutes to "charge" the slightly-faster-than-normal movement speed — which, of course, immediately fades away the moment you either attack something or get attacked.

We're also talking about a game whose original implementation of "fast travel" required you to fight your way to a huge "crag" two zones away from your starting city and collect a crystal from it, all for the privilege of being able to teleport an inconveniently long distance away from any of the game's towns.

We're talking about a game where, when you want to cross the sea, you have to physically stand and wait for a ship, and when you're on the ship, you have to wait for the voyage to complete. (Sometimes monsters attack. A lot of the time you just have to enjoy the ride.)

If those descriptions make you smile, even a little bit, you are probably someone who will enjoy Final Fantasy XI.

The fact the game demands so much patience makes it feel very rewarding, though. When you achieve something, you feel like you've bloody well earned it. This is not a game where you are a super-special Warrior of Light pretty much from the get-go; this is a game where you are a relatively normal person — albeit one with, arguably, extraordinary combat abilities compared to your "peers" among the NPCs — just trying to make their way in the world. Make a bit of cash, get a bit of training in, visit some new places.

It's this rather open-ended feel that I really like about Final Fantasy XI. In many ways, it feels like a very pure reflection of what I call the old "world RPG" formula exemplified by titles like the early Ultima games. There is a long-term goal to go and complete, but the vast majority of your playtime will be spent doing rather freeform activities to build up your character in a way that you see fit.

Some of the best things that have been added to Final Fantasy XI since its original release are designed to make it more than just grinding monsters for hours at a time. The "Records of Eminence" quests do a great job of giving you things to do and acting as a sort of guide to what it is possible to do in the game, without having to spend half your playtime looking at a wiki. The "Field Guide" and "Grounds Tome" books at the entrances to field and dungeon areas respectively provide you with focused sets of monster targets to down in exchange for generous experience bonuses. And of course there's plenty of quests, the main storyline missions and, once you get later into the game, lots and lots of side activities. I don't yet know how "important" some of these things are — or indeed what 90% of them are at this point — but I'm intrigued to find out.

Thus far I'm up to level 25 on the job I started with — Warrior this time around — and I'm levelling Monk as a subjob for now. I'm on the "rank 2" missions for my home nation, and making good progress. I've also kicked off the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel storyline that was added much later than the other main stories, and acts as another kind of "guide" through what the game offers, with its own narrative to follow — and plenty of extremely helpful benefits as rewards along the way.

I'm enjoying myself a lot. I don't know how long it's going to take me to get through the various storylines, but levelling has been going at a brisk pace, and I'm feeling good about how things are going so far. I'm looking forward to finally doing things like taking down the Shadow Lord, which I've never done before, and particularly getting into the well-regarded Chains of Promathia expansion storyline, which longstanding FFXI players have been banging on about the quality of for years.

So yeah. It's a good time. You just need patience. And if there's one thing I have developed over the years, it is a very strong sense of patience.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 699: Final Fantasy XI and the art of patience appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I love Star Fox. It's probably one of my favourite Nintendo series. Specifically, I love the Super NES original, because while it's perhaps not the most technically impressive game when looking back on it retrospectively, it's still a great game that I enjoy a lot — and it has an amazing soundtrack. I rate the original Star Fox's soundtrack light years ahead of its 64-bit counterpart, because Star Fox 64 hailed from that age where Nintendo games had music that was beautifully composed, but played back on one of the worst MIDI synths a console has ever had. The new one takes what sounds like the music from Star Fox 64 and fully orchestrates it, which is just lovely.

The new game looks like it's going to be mostly keeping to Star Fox's roots as an arcade-style game with a level-based structure, and branching paths through the complete sequence of levels depending on the things you do and your overall performance. I'm interested to see how this will be received in the modern age, since the vast majority of big-budget games that come out today are designed to be huge, sprawling timesinks that take hundreds of hours for a single playthrough. Making a game that is short but highly replayable feels like it's a ballsy thing to do these days — and it really shouldn't, but it does.

It does look like the new Star Fox will be highly replayable, too. As well as the main story mode with its branching paths, it looks like there's a "Challenge" mode where you play a single level and attempt to complete specific objectives in it. This could either be great fun or extremely annoying, but I think it's the right decision to separate it out into its own mode rather than integrate it into the main story.

There's also what looks like a really fun multiplayer mode, too, with 4v4 battles between Star Fox and Star Wolf. It doesn't look like any of the three modes on offer are a simple deathmatch, either; there are different objectives to complete on each one, which will reward fancy flying as well as keeping the enemy off your back.

All in all, I'm excited and pleased to see Star Fox get yet another chance. Part of me wishes they'd let the story, such as it is, move on a bit instead of continually remaking the same one over and over again, but ultimately this is a gameplay-centric experience — at least previous installments have been — and so the reason you're blasting everything out of the sky doesn't matter too much. It does look like the whole thing is much more "cinematic" now thanks to the advances in technology we've seen over the last few console generations. It's nice to see Fox and company be able to chat with one another as fully modelled characters rather than just avatars chattering away during gameplay.

So I guess that's a Switch 2 game I'll be adding to my library when it arrives, although if it's on a Game Key Card, we are going to have words, Nintendo.

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The post #oneaday Day 698: Star Fox is back... again! appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Perhaps I can tell you a bit about the Evercade Game of the Month game which came out today. I made a video about it and everything, like, for my actual job:

The Game of the Month programme, if you're unfamiliar, is a thing we do every so often where we give folks the opportunity to download and play a game on a sort of "trial" basis for a month or so, then all the games we've featured in a particular year get bundled together onto an Indie Heroes cartridge the following year, along with some cartridge-exclusive games.

It's a fun way to give some attention and love to the "homebrew" scene, and it effectively means that we get one of the first cartridges of next year up and running well ahead of schedule, which helps take a bit of the pressure off. And with the ambitious projects we've been doing recently, any opportunity to take a bit of the pressure off is very welcome indeed!

Last month, we had a special "shareware" version of BioMenace Remastered, which I'm thrilled we're bringing to Evercade, as I used to love BioMenace when I was a kid. I only ever had the shareware version, as many of us did, so it will be very exciting to play through the full thing when we eventually have it. (I also bought a copy on PC to support the chap behind it, who is a thoroughly lovely person.)

This month, we have Inspector Waffles: Early Days, which is an adventure game built in GB Studio, the tool of choice for seemingly 95% of Game Boy homebrewers these days. It's a flexible little engine, clearly primarily designed for top-down role-playing game-type experiences, and Inspector Waffles: Early Days makes good use of it to create an adventure game featuring not only top-down exploration and examining things, but also first-person point-and-click sequences, dialogue puzzles and a bunch of secrets. You can probably blast through it pretty quickly if you know what you're doing, like most adventure games, but it's an enjoyable ride with the whole "everyone is cats" thing being a fun gimmick.

We're actually still assembling the list of Game of the Month titles for the coming months, so if you happen to be reading this and you have something that will work on Evercade — generally speaking, an game built on any of the platforms we've previously emulated games for is a solid bet — then be sure to drop developer@evercade.co.uk a line and we'll see what we can do.

An hour and a half left to go on the Final Fantasy XI patch. Maybe a bit of NEOGEO while I wait, then…

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The post #oneaday Day 697: Another post! appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

And then indulge me while I write two things today, because I feel like I "should". I'm just like that. Also I have just reinstalled Final Fantasy XI and it has to go through its whole many-hours patching process, so I may as well do something to fill the time.

I've decided to give Final Fantasy XI another honest go because I've always enjoyed it when I've played it in the past, I have been wanting to play through its story for more than 20 years (and there's a lot more of it now than when I first wanted to play it!) and I'm sort of "between games" right now. This time around, I want to make a proper effort to get through the main scenario. I know there's a lot of other stuff in Final Fantasy XI, but we'll see if I feel the need to jump into any of that as I work my way through; my priority is just seeing what the main storylines are.

The reason I say this is because I've pretty much made a decision: I'm going to head back into Final Fantasy XIV at some point before the new expansion drops — likely when the new "Beastmaster" job is added in the next main "part" of the Dawntrail finale patch, which is looking like July. Before that happens, I'd like to have had a good crack at Final Fantasy XI, so I'm going to treat it as my "main" game for the immediate future. I think it's going to be interesting — particularly as, for several years now, the game has been in a state where much of it is eminently soloable thanks to the fact you can bring recruitable NPC "Trusts" along with you for pretty much everything in the game, not just instanced dungeons like in Final Fantasy XIV.

As I say, I don't know how much into the weeds I'm going to get, because my main priorities are 1) getting to the level cap of 99 and 2) getting through the main storylines of the base game and all the expansions. The two will likely intertwine somewhat, and gearing up, particularly once at level 99, will likely involve dipping into some of the activities outside of the main story, but we'll see. I'm going to try and minimise guide usage as much as possible, too, because I think that will be much more interesting. I'm also curious to see if it's even possible to play that way — and if it isn't, well, there are 20+ years worth of FAQs, wikis and all manner of other resources out there to follow along with.

I'm excited! I'm also aware that I've fallen off Final Fantasy XI multiple times in the past, not because I wasn't enjoying it, but because something else came along that occupied my attention. Hopefully that won't happen this time around — because I'm increasingly conscious that, because of the game's age, there is likely only so much more time I have to be able to actually do this quest.

So Vana'Diel awaits! In about two hours' time, according to the PlayOnline Viewer, anyway. So how should I occupy myself in the meantime… hmmm?

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The post #oneaday Day 696: The missing day appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I love Final Fantasy VIII! I played it at a particularly formative point in my life — my first year of university — and it left a significant impact on me. It's a game I played with someone who was very important to me, it's a game that I shared some good times with friends over, and it's a game that I legitimately enjoyed from start to finish.

The typical argument from the Final Fantasy VIII haters is that it's a "bad" game because "the best way to play it is not to engage with its systems". Bollocks. I beat the game, including its superbosses, precisely because I engaged with its systems. Junction up a bunch of Aura, Ultima and other high-level spells to your important stats, cast Aura on yourself to get your special attacks rolling as often as possible, and watch the damage fly. Immensely satisfying. And, as "game-breaking" as it felt to do that, it is 1) what the game is designed to allow you to do and 2) really no different to what you do in any number of other RPGs; one of the most fun things about them as a genre is that there is usually a way to "break" them beyond their usual limits and start dealing astronomical levels of damage. Certain games even design themselves around this philosophy; titles like Disgaea, Omega Quintet and Trillion: God of Destruction very much fall into this category.

But I've learned that it's not worth even attempting to have this discussion when someone has decided to start yelling about how much they hate this twenty-seven year old game. I don't know if it's a weird form of clout-chasing, algorithm baiting or what, but it just seems bizarre to me how often I've been seeing this come up, usually completely unprompted, just recently. Perhaps I'm just Baader-Meinhofing myself, but I don't think it's that; I mean, it's weird, right? That game came out twenty-seven years ago, and people have suddenly decided that they're mad about it? I really don't get it.

I especially don't get it because back when Final Fantasy VIII was current, everyone I knew loved it. We had a running joke among our friendship group that every time we went to visit the local independent computer shop, at least one of us would ask when Final Fantasy VIII was coming out. This was such a running joke that my friend Woody even incorporated it into his unfinished (barely started, really) Klik and Play project called Resident Evil EX, in which Agent Wesley Wilson infiltrated a zombie-infested mall, where one of the survivors was cheery ol' Richie, proprietor of First Compute, and, indeed, walking in there would prompt a conversation (voice acted by us) about exactly when Final Fantasy VIII would be coming out.

Final Fantasy in general seems to attract these sorts of passionate haters for some reason. People really hate the fact that the series has been constantly reinventing itself over the years — despite a stated, explicit philosophy of the creators being "if it's not new, it's not Final Fantasy". And this, in turn, leads to people just… making shit up about the various games that, for one reason or another, are perceived as unpopular. It seems that it is Final Fantasy VIII's turn right now, since Final Fantasy XIII hatred appears to have died down a lot just recently.

But I mean it! I don't remember seeing anything anywhere near this level of hatred for, just to remind you, this twenty-seven year old game, prior to this year. Perhaps it was out there. Perhaps I just didn't see it. But I find that a bit difficult to believe. It just seems to be nothing more than the fashionable thing to crack wise about right now — just another meaningless, pointless social media trend that takes away from the possibility of ever having a real, sincere, meaningful discussion with anyone online any more.

Anyway. I just felt like saying that today. This is not an invitation for you (yes, you) to come into my comments and start rabbiting on about how much you hate Final Fantasy VIII. I honestly absolutely do not care. Or, perhaps more accurately, I'm not interested. Put a bit of that energy into telling me about something you do like — perhaps something I've never heard of! That's much more fun. Believe me. I've been making that the basis of what I write about games online for quite some time now, and it's far more rewarding than just hate, hate hate.

But I guess it was forever thus. The "funny" bad reviews in games magazines were always the ones people remember the most. The bad reviews on today's websites are scientifically designed to maximise "engagement". And someone blurting out, completely unprompted, how much they hate a twenty-seven year old game that isn't even that bad? I don't know what that is, but I don't think I want to be part of it.

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The post #oneaday Day 695: Final Fantasy VIII was fine appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Thus far the project is standing at 16,826 words. I anticipate that by the time I finish this — which will be a pretty long time from now — that number will be in the high six digits at the very least. There's a lot of work still to do, but I feel good about this; I feel like this is a worthwhile undertaking, and one that I'm enjoying doing.

It's not something I plan to make any money from; it's not something I plan to plaster ads all over; it's not something I'm doing to "be famous" or anything like that. It's just a project based on something I enjoy that I think will help others to enjoy said thing as much as I do. Plus it's an excuse for me to dive down some thoroughly interesting research rabbit-holes.

Doing this is reminding me that I love writing, particularly about the things I'm passionate about. (Go on then; I'll give you a little hint as to what the project is about: it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, about games.) I love the little journeys that bits of research take you on; I love trying to craft a narrative from those nuggets of information you find; I love trying to get my enthusiasm across in a way that is hopefully enjoyable for the reader to engage with.

I don't know if I'll ever finish this. I would certainly like to, and while I'm feeling the strong Autistic Hyperfixation Energy, I intend to keep taking advantage of it as much as possible. I reached what I consider to be the first major milestone in the project this evening… out of many milestones along the way, yes, but a significant one, nonetheless. It feels like finally cresting a particularly steep hill, so I am going to "reward" myself with some nice relaxing time tomorrow. I haven't played Pragmata for a few days and need to get back on that, but this has been taking priority while I've been feeling very much in the mood for it.

On that note, though, it's after midnight, and I think I should probably get some sleep now.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 694: The joy of hyperfixations appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

At this point, I'm not even surprised any more. The broad concept that is "the video games media" is almost completely gutted at this point, with only a few sites still holding on. IGN and Gamespot still exist; Polygon still (kind of) exists; smaller, platform-centric sites like Push Square and NintendoLife still exist; and Kotaku has come back from the "dead" more times than I can count at this point.

I find myself pondering a few things about the whole situation. First of all, given that gaming is bigger than ever, how on Earth are we unable to sustain a specialist media sector focusing on it? Someone on Bluesky suggested it was because a significant number of the people who "play games" are little more than "content consumers", just "consuming" the latest thing that comes along and then banishing it from their mind; not taking the medium seriously as an art form, in other words. There's certainly an element of that, but I don't buy that it's a satisfactory explanation for what has been going on with the media over the course of the last few years.

Perhaps it's some sites discovering that certain "types" of games journalism just don't work? Those of you of a certain age will probably remember discussions over "New Games Journalism" and the question of whether we would ever have a "Lester Bangs of Games Journalism". These discussions were happening back in the late '00s, and centred around the idea of games journalism and criticism in particular moving away from the bog-standard news, preview, review, guide format in favour of something that was more… experiential, I guess you'd call it. Treating games more akin to how literary and artistic criticism treats other, more well-established art forms. "Telling the stories of the people behind the games", all that sort of thing. Things that look like they might be admirable when you look at them as part of a mission statement.

Thing is, I'm not sure that's what the readers want. The one thing you might notice about all the sites that have managed to survive for decades at this point is that they are, for the most part, still beholden to the same old news, preview, review, guide cycle that has been in place since the days of print. And my theory is that this is, as stale as it might be, what people still want from games journalism. "The stories of the people behind your favourite games" can be interesting, but when all a lot of people want to know is whether or not Pragmata is any good, I feel like those articles — which often take a hell of a lot of research, networking and general access to their subjects — may not be entirely sustainable, particularly on a site that needs to keep the lights on through ad revenue.

I'm not saying this is a particularly desirable situation. The overreliance on ads has lead to the "guideslop" era we're in at the moment, where every game that looks even vaguely likely to attract a few clicks gets three thousand pieces of "guide content", each one focusing on a single hyper-specific thing about the game in question, rather than a single, quality, well-crafted walkthrough. This is a load of old shit; there are a lot of writers who could be doing much more interesting work stuck on the guides beat, and I'm very much willing to bet they are some of the hardest working but lowest paid people in the business.

But I think back to old games magazines and why I enjoy reading them, and it's because each of them captures a moment in time. Times when we were excited for games that we knew the name of, but very little else about besides a couple of tiny, fuzzy screenshots; I think some mags got pretty much a full year of news stories out of two "Zelda 64" screenshots back in the day. Times when we were excited for the new possibilities that seemingly mind-blowing new platforms would offer us — and then the crushing disappointment when they turned out to not be that good after all. (Philips CD-i and 3DO say hello.) Times when an amazing new game would be the cover star of a magazine and turn out to be even better than we had ever hoped for — or in some cases, catastrophically bad.

I'm not sure sites writing about labour conditions in the industry, unions and quarterly financial results are really what gaming enthusiasts want from the press that supposedly represents them. I know it's certainly not what I'm particularly interested in.

I don't really read any gaming sites any more, and I often ask myself why that is. There are still quite a few out there doing good work, and there's a decent amount of diversity in the types of coverage out there, still… at the moment, anyway. I'm just not sure some of it is sustainable in the long term, and I wonder if a desire to focus on that unsustainable stuff just because it seems like "the right thing to do" — which it very much is in many cases — is what has got the games media as a whole into the messy position it's in today.

So what's the answer? I have no idea, really. In my ideal world, we'd go back to reading magazines every month, but despite the fact some magazines do still exist in print — I recently resubscribed to Retro Gamer, for one — it seems that is perceived as even more unsustainable than everything I've described above.

As someone who, as a young 'un, wanted nothing more than to follow his brother's footsteps into video games media, it's extremely sad to see all this happen. But I'm also kind of glad that I'm no longer directly in that space, because it seems like a hell of a bad time to be a video game specialist writer right now.

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The post #oneaday Day 693: Another one bites the dust appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

However, the recent news that has come out about the upcoming expansion, Evercold, has me thinking that I might return. There are a few reasons for this.

First and foremost is the social angle. I like the people that I used to play with. It would be fun to be able to hang out with them again. There are also people I know who are vaguely interested in giving Final Fantasy XIV a go, and shortly the legendary Free Trial will be adding everything up to and including the Shadowbringers expansion, commonly agreed to be one of The Best Bits, which may make it easier to convince people to join in.

Secondly, I do miss the game a bit. I have had some special times in Final Fantasy XIV over the years, and I will always, always love the soundtrack. Soken has worked miracles with that game, and I feel almost like I'm letting him down to not be playing. He has no idea who I am, of course, but still. He is a wonderful person and a brilliant composer, and enjoying his stuff in context is great.

Thirdly, the changes that are coming to Evercold sound really interesting. I'm particularly intrigued by the "Evolved" battle system, which promises to reduce the number of actions you'll have to assign to your hotbars by having more of the dynamically changing buttons that were introduced with Dawntrail's new jobs. Supposedly most jobs will be able to function perfectly well with 16 action bar slots in Evolved mode, which means a lot less in the way of remembering some obtuse button combinations, particularly when returning to the game from a long break. (Of course, it means learning some new button combinations, but they will, at least, be simpler.)

I'm also interested in the move away from "endgame currency" as a progression system. I don't think we've really had it explained in much depth how exactly the new "seasons" system is going to work, but Yoshi-P seemed determined to emphasise the point that it's not a Battle Pass or free-to-play type "pay to win" situation. What it looks like is a flexible system where you earn points for doing… stuff. And rather than being forced into grinding the same old Roulettes and high-level stuff, it looks like you might have the opportunity to do a broader range of activities, which will be nice.

Perhaps I will hop back in once the new patch arrives tomorrow. There's the new Beastmaster job to explore, plus I didn't do much with Blue Mage, and of course I have plenty of other jobs still to level too — as well as just re-learning the game after so long away.

I think I probably will go back. I'm just not sure quite when yet, or how it will fit into my life more broadly. But we'll see. We'll see.

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The post #oneaday Day 689: Do I return...? appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I will be peppering today's post with photos from today's trip.

The event today centred around a talk by Ian "h0ffman" Ford, a veteran of the Amiga demoscene who returned to coding and composing on classic computer hardware back in 2010, and has been spending much of his time since COVID fiddling around with disassembling and porting classic games from one platform to another. To date, he has ported the MSX2 version of Metal Gear to Amiga, the MSX game Knightmare (no relation to the TV show) to Amiga also, plus Shinobi and Golden Axe from Sega's System 16 arcade board to NEOGEO, plus the modern Unity game Cecconoid to Amiga. His talk explored how most of these projects came about because of repeatedly falling down rabbit holes while satisfying his own curiosity.

Outside of h0ffman's talk, which happened after lunch, all of us in attendance were free to explore The Cave, the Arcade Archive, and the organisation's newly renovated workshop space, known as the Pump House. (The entire operation is in an old mill, and the Pump House used to be part of the site's earlier purpose; it's not just a funny name they gave it.)

The Cave is up on the top floor of the mill, and is a large, open-plan room filled with old computers and consoles of various descriptions, including some fairly exotic machines from outside of the UK, Europe and North America, such as the beautiful Sharp X68000 from Japan. This is an absolutely gorgeous machine that, if money were no object, I would very much have in my collection. If you've never come across one, it's a 16-bit computer that has the audio-visual capabilities of its console contemporaries, meaning it plays host to a lot of excellent games, including some near-perfect arcade ports.

There's also lots of interesting console obscurities, too, such as NEC's ill-fated PC Engine spinoff, the Supergrafx, a console noteworthy for, outside of backwards compatibility with the aforementioned PC Engine, only having five titles in its library. And you thought the Wii U was a flop. Despite this, it's an exceedingly cool little system worth having a play with in an environment like The Cave!

Another nice thing about The Cave is that it acknowledges well-known, popular hardware in unusual configurations, such as this kiosk multi-game version of the NES that you would have found in electronics stores back in the '80s. All the stuff at the Cave is hooked up to great quality screens, too, with many of them being professional video or broadcast monitors, Sony Trinitrons and the like.

Here's another one: Sega's Mega-Tech arcade system, which was basically a Mega Drive you bought time on back in the day. Here, as with all the other arcade machines in The Cave and the Arcade Archive, it's set to free play, so you can enjoy a selection of 16-bit classics in the arcade form factor.

Nintendo had done something similar with the PlayChoice-10 machine, which provides you with a selection of NES games to play using arcade controls. It's a very strange feeling to play the original Super Mario Bros. with a stick and arcade buttons, but it works pretty well! Not surprising, really, since so many games from that era were at least inspired by arcade games if they weren't direct ports.

Here's a selection of obscure Japanese computers, including one from Sega. I don't know much about these, but they all look lovely, and it would be fun to have a fiddle around with them one day.

Here's some more obscure Japanese computers, just because. That Sharp X1 is a lovely looking thing. I actually didn't give the keys a clack, but it looks like they would feel nice to type on.

A little closer to home, here's a selection of lesser-known home computers, including the Oric-1, Tatung Einstein, Dragon 64 and Sam Coupé. A lot of these are lovely looking machines; they just failed to make the same impact as the bigger hitters of the era like the Spectrum and Commodore 64.

Here's a thing that I really wanted as a kid, but never managed to get hold of (i.e. convince my parents to get for me). It's an LCD game adaptation of Sega's After Burner, but with an elaborate control panel that makes the game feel a lot cooler than it actually is. The joystick is satisfying to grapple with the throttle control makes a pleasing "clunk" when you move it between speed settings, and a cool thing I've not seen before is that the LCD screen has an LED behind it so when you destroy enemy planes, there's a red "flash" where they're exploding. It's a pretty neat toy, but, given that we had computers at home that could play much more interesting and complex games, I'm not surprised that my parents never bought me one of these — and I'm not mad about that, I hasten to add!

There are lots of things to play at The Cave. This lovely setup has a selection of consoles hooked up and ready to play multiplayer just like we used to back in the day. The Gamecube and N64 were most readily accessible today, and they looked great on the Sony monitor.

One of my favourite parts of The Cave is the fake "software shop", set up to look like an old WHSmith upstairs. For any non-Brits reading, WHSmith was a shop that was mostly known as a newsagents where you'd buy magazines and newspapers, but also tended to carry stuff like stationery, art and craft supplies and, in the 1980s, computer and video games. There were a lot of shops like this in the '80s that performed what I would argue was their "primary function" downstairs, then they'd do computery stuff upstairs — one of my favourite examples in this regard is Boots, which is a pharmacy. Why would a pharmacy sell ZX Spectrum games on cassette? Same reason they'd process your photographs or sell you picture frames, presumably — to make a bit of extra cash from jumping in on popular hobbies and pastimes.

It's tricky to get good shots of them by the very nature of the environment, but on the ground floor of the mill is the Arcade Archive, a noisy room full of classic arcade machines, many of which have been lovingly restored to fully working condition by the Retro Collective folks, and some of which make use of modern solutions such as the MiSTer. These cabs — from left to right, Bubble Bobble, Galaga '88, BurgerTime and Double Dragon, all in the sort of generic cabinets you'd see in a fish and chip shop in a town centre circa 1989 — are, as far as I'm aware, restored originals.

Conversely, there's a NEOGEO MVS cabinet that I forgot to take a photo of that is running off the new MiSTer Multisystem 2's JAMMA arcade cabinet incarnation, which allows you to use plastic NFC cards to switch games as if you're swapping out cartridges. You get the enjoyment of playing with "four bright buttons and two joysticks" on a CRT, along with the modern conveniences of the MiSTer such as the ability to easily swap games, or play the console versions of games on the arcade cabinet.

Here's a lovely thing, showing up much better thanks to its position near the door to the outside: Atari's Star Wars arcade game. This is still a supremely playable 3D shoot 'em up with beautiful vector graphics and a wonderfully immersive, involving analogue yoke control system. Great fun to play — just a pity there's no sit-down version in the Archive, though I don't think there'd be room for one at the moment anyway!

Here's a few more machines in the Archive, including OutRun on the right, then Silkworm, Robotron 2084, Ghosts 'n' Goblins and, back in the corner, the original Space Invaders. I realised I'd never actually played Robotron in its original twin-stick arcade incarnation, so I took the opportunity to rectify this. It's a lot of fun!

More interesting and unusual things with this Tetris arcade machine. I'm not sure of the origin of this, but it was a nice looking machine, and Tetris' gameplay is, of course, a great fit for the arcade.

And that's pretty much that for now. It was a thoroughly lovely day that I enjoyed a lot. h0ffman's talk was interesting — even if some of the more techie stuff went over my head a bit! — and it was nice to see some people I haven't seen for a while. I even met someone who actually watches my YouTube videos! I guess I better make some more then, huh.

Right, on that note, I'm knackered, so I'm going to go and collapse into a puddle of goo for the remainder of the evening. Visit The Cave if you get the chance — it's a truly lovely day out that I can highly recommend.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 688: Cave dweller appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

With that in mind, I'm probably going to have an early night tonight. I'd like to get back into Pragmata, which I'm enjoying a lot, but I'm also not sure my brain is up to playing anything too complex this evening. Perhaps this would be a good evening to do a bit of retro gaming, with an emphasis on something that isn't too challenging or complex to deal with.

I actually have the next two Evercade cartridges that haven't been released yet, which I'm kind of dying to talk about but can't because although I have them in my hands, we haven't even announced them yet. That will be happening soon, however, and when it does I will have plenty to enthuse about, believe me. They're not the biggest releases of the year, by any means, but they are some of my favourites.

No; I'm thinking this evening might be a good opportunity to settle down with something comfortably familiar, but which I perhaps haven't played for a while. I'm hoping in the process of typing this, something will come to mind that feels like it might be fun to spend my evening playing. Maybe Starwing? I haven't played that for a while. Last time I tried it, the MiSTer SNES core was having issues with the SuperFX chip, but I believe that's been resolved at this point, so that might be a good shout. I do love a bit of Starwing, and it is actually quite a long time since I've played it.

I'm going to get back into doing some videos soon, for those who have been wondering why it's been all quiet on that front for a while. I just haven't really felt an urge to do that for a little while, and forcing yourself to do something you're not really feeling is a sure-fire way to get yourself feeling burnt out. I won't have time to do any this coming weekend, as we're taking a trip to The Cave, but I have a few days off for my birthday at the start of next week, so I might take a day or two to record a few things over that period. Exactly what, I have no idea just yet; I have a few things in mind that I might like to explore, but haven't decided firmly on when or how to tackle them. This upcoming bit of free time might be the ideal opportunity to jump into them.

Anyway, I think I might have made a decision on what to do with my evening — although at the rate I'm going, I may well be asleep before I've got anywhere. If that's the way it goes, though, that's the way it goes!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 685: Very tired appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Pragmata is very, very good.

I'll go into more detail about this over on MoeGamer once I've beaten it (because I most certainly am going to beat this) but I thought I'd post a few initial thoughts over here for now.

For the unfamiliar, Pragmata is a game that Capcom has apparently been working on for a very long time indeed, which might account for why so many people have been saying that it sounds like a game somewhat "out of time"; depending on who you talk to, you will almost certainly hear the opinion that it is "like a PS2 game" or "like an Xbox 360 game". (Of the two, I think the latter is probably more accurate, for what it's worth.)

The reason for this is that it thumbs its nose at a lot of today's gameplay conventions. It's not open world. It's not an RPG in disguise. Its controls are extremely simple and straightforward (move, aim, shoot, interact, plus moving the little cursor thingy during the hacking minigame). It's not belabouring how emotionally resonant it is through overwrought, manipulative writing. It's not trying to be all things to all people. It's just trying to be one thing, and to do that thing really, really well.

And it succeeds! If I had to pigeonhole it I'd say it's a third-person shooter, but it's not a constant, all-out action sort of affair. There's a lot of exploration, with plenty of hidden rewards for those willing to get curious — but those "hidden" areas are always possible to stumble across without relying on a guide. There's an element of survival horror, in that all weapons but your standard sidearm have severely limited ammo, and you only have limited healing opportunities per expedition.

Mostly it's just an extraordinarily well-designed game. You have a companion character who is actually useful — both in terms of her mechanical function, and in that her "barks" during combat are actually helpful audible cues for things like dodging attacks. The levels are beautifully designed to have a grandiose sense of scale at times, but never overwhelm you with possible ways you can go. It controls well. It looks great. It runs great. It's just great. Really, really great.

I think that's probably all I want to say about it for now, because honestly I'm just eager to get back to it. I've completely cleared out the first two levels (aside from two hidden chests in the second level that I will need to come back with a new ability for) and am just going into the third. I also suspect it's not going to be an obscenely long game, which, honestly, I'm 100% fine with.

Anyway. It's time to hop back into the Cradle and see what new horrors await me and Diana…

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The post #oneaday Day 681: Pragmatic appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For the unfamiliar, Robot Unicorn Attack is a simple, "endless runner" game with just two buttons: one to jump (which can be used again in mid-air for a double-jump), and one for a rainbow attack dash move that can break through crystal stars. Your one and only goal in Robot Unicorn Attack is to survive as long as possible and score as many points as you can across three "wishes" (lives). As the game says when you start it, "you will fail". And indeed you will. But then you will try again, and again, and again.

It's a potent example at arcade-style game design at its absolute best: provide an experience that is extremely easy to understand, even for those who don't play a lot of games, and then balance it just well enough to make it inordinately compelling rather than frustrating, but still challenging. It is unironically one of the most well-crafted games of the 2010s, and I'm glad that people have found a means of preserving it — and in a fashion that is true to its original incarnation, no less. As a Flash game, originally published by Adult Swim, Robot Unicorn Attack's home is very much on the Web, and while I certainly wouldn't be averse to having an offline version I could play at any time I want, you can't get much more convenient than just going to a website and playing using nothing more than the Z and X keys on your keyboard.

Web games are in such a strange place right now. There's always been a certain amount of cloning and overly derivative stuff, but this seems to be particularly rife these days. There are about a billion variations on the "run down the path and go through gates with numbers on them" game. I don't know what the original and first one of those was; I just know there are now so many of them it is, at times, difficult to find anything else.

It doesn't help that a lot of today's Web games are adaptations of mobile games, with all the obnoxious predatory monetisation and infestation with adverts that entails. But, like I say, I'm pleased to see that some of the all-time classics are preserved through emulation — and best of all, no-one can bitch at you about not playing on "original hardware" if you play Robot Unicorn Attack on CrazyGames, or anywhere else it might be hosted, because it always was intended to just be played right there in your browser.

Now that I've rediscovered it, I think it might be time for a high score run or twenty before bed. Sing it with me, now… always, I want to be with you, and make believe with you, and live in harmony, harmony, oh love…

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The post #oneaday Day 679: Hold on to the night, there will be no shame appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

This is Nintendo at its most "software toy" I think I've ever seen them — although I say this with the caveat that I never played the 3DS version of Tomodachi Life. It's a delight. It's like playing The Sims without having to do the boring and annoying bits. It's like playing a citybuilder without having to worry about complicated management things. It's what mobile and social games might have been if they had never been corrupted by greed and predatory monetisation strategies.

Above all, though, it's a medium through which you can express and play with your creativity and imagination, and I love that. While the first couple of hours or so are deliberately constrained to introduce you to the basic features of the game and its interface, it doesn't take long to get to a point where you've unlocked most of the main "mechanics", such as they are, and can start using them to play with your creations in the little world you gradually build for them.

It's possibly the best use of the "Miis" that Nintendo have had on their consoles since the Wii days, and the delightfully lo-fi synthesised speech they talk in — no AI-generated voices here — is a pleasant reminder of a more innocent age.

That can be said about the whole experience, really. It's a reminder of when we all had the capacity to play imaginatively, only now our imaginations can be supported by interactivity. No longer do you have to pretend your dolls are talking to one another, because now they actually do talk to one another — although you're not always privy to the details of all their conversations. (Rather charmingly, you can catch the odd word here and there, and most of these are things that you've previously entered into the game as subjects for them to talk about with one another, meaning my little collection of Miis likes talking about flatulence, eating sausages, cats and F-15 Strike Eagles.

I'll have some more to say about this delightful little game over on MoeGamer when I've spent a bit more time with it. But for now I can say confidently that I'm glad I decided to take a punt on this silly little game. The kind of silliness it offers is precisely what the world needs right now — much as Animal Crossing came along at the exact right time when the pandemic hit. (Even if I didn't get along with Animal Crossing personally, I at least appreciate what it represented.)

Anyway, I've peppered this article with a few screenshots from this evening's session. As I say, I'll have much more to say in the near future, but for now, I should probably go to bed rather than checking in on everyone one last time this evening…

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The post #oneaday Day 678: Chillin' with my Tomodachi appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

One that jumped out at me was someone saying that "everything Persona post-3 is abysmal" in response to the first Revelations: Persona game being on the list. And just… come on. Those games are some of the most well-regarded examples of their genre ever. Sure, you might not jive with them personally, particularly if you're not someone who gets on well with lengthy, primarily text-based story sequences, but to stretch that out into those games being "abysmal" is… well, it's an absolutely abysmal take, it has to be said.

The trouble is, this kind of shit is engagement bait. I'm engaging with it by talking about it, even if I'm not linking directly to it, when the sensible thing to do would have been to just go "huh", close the tab and then never think about other people with Bad Opinions ever again. Negativity is engagement — and, to paraphrase an excellent video I watched earlier today (thanks, Chris), it's actually one of the most potent forms of engagement there is. So it should probably be little surprise that we're constantly bombarded with takes about the "worst [x] ever" rather than enthusiasm about cool things.

I always make an effort not to do this with my own material — that which is on a specific subject, anyway. I know I can get a tad negative on this here blog at times, but that's part of the point of this place — for it to be a place where I can vent off some steam, express my frustrations and get things out of my head rather than letting them fester. On MoeGamer, my gaming website, and my YouTube channel, however, I make a point of always trying my very best to "find the fun" — even in stuff which is well-known as being "bad". My proudest achievement in that regard was successfully finding genuine enjoyment in the notorious Sonic the Hedgehog reboot from 2006, a game which, for a while, Wikipedia described (without citation) as "considered to be one of the worst in the entire video game medium". (That line isn't there any more.)

But what is the result of that? For the most part, probably a fraction of the visibility that I'd get if I just put out a video on how "bad" Amiga platform games are, or how "terrible" the graphics on Atari 2600 are, or how much of a waste of time existing in this miserable world is. I don't have any intention of changing, however; if I'm feeling like this, I'm sure at least a few other people are feeling like this, too. And if, through the things I do online, I can provide those people with an escape from the constant bombardment of negativity and "worst thing ever" content, I consider that a success, regardless of anything the numbers say.

Most of these people saying something is the "worst [X] ever" have no real frame of reference of what "the worst" really looks like. What they really mean is either "I, personally, did not like this" or, more commonly, "popular opinion suggests that this game is not very good and I am not going to argue against that". And I'm so very, very tired of it. I want to sit anyone who thinks something like Persona 4 or 5 are bad down with some long-defunct mobile game shit like Rage of Bahamut and show them what a really, genuinely, actually bad game is.

But I better not. I can see the thumbnails already. Although for some reason, gacha games have remained curiously immune to being branded "bad" games, despite a lot of them really, genuinely being not only absolutely terrible from a design and mechanical perspective, but actively hostile to their players. That's probably something to talk about another day, though.

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The post #oneaday Day 675: The worst ever appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm installing Wipeout as we speak. I suspect this will be the most… challenging to deal with, shall we say, but I'm also looking forward to giving it a try. I love thrill rides, but as a fat person I cannot ride real ones, so I'm hoping that something like Wipeout will scratch that itch somewhat. And even if it doesn't, I've been meaning to try Wipeout Omega Collection for a long time anyway.

The others I know a bit less about. I know Battlezone was quite well-regarded when it first launched quite early in the PSVR's lifespan, No Man's Sky should hopefully be quite an experience — though I do wonder how its more complex gameplay elements will translate to VR — and Ultrawings I know nothing about, but it was three quid so even if it's rubbish I don't mind.

VR has its flaws, particularly with earlier implementations like the first PSVR. But I do like it. It's an interesting way of experiencing things, and it's kind of a shame that it has never quite taken off in the way anyone really hoped it would — largely due to those flaws, in many cases, and the expense in others. (That said, I bet you could probably grab yourself a PSVR relatively cheap now. PSVR2 is still pricey though.) I will be interested to see what the supposed "Steam Frame" does for VR, if anything; saying that, I will be interested to see whether it launches at all, given the, uh, "challenges" that tech is facing right now as a result of ongoing AI cuntishness and… various geopolitical events, shall we say.

Anyway, Wipeout has finished installing, so I'm off to give it a quick blast before my dinner and to see if my stomach contents remain intact. Wish me luck!

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The post #oneaday Day 672: Return to virtuality appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Chances are if you are even a little bit plugged into gaming news you know what Doki Doki Literature Club is at this point; if you don't, I did a spoileriffic writeup on it over on MoeGamer back around the time it first started getting attention — nearly ten years ago at this point, Jesus. To summarise for those disinclined to click a link (you know who you are), Doki Doki Literature Club is a visual novel that plays with expectations and tropes of the format to deliver a potent narrative, primarily about mental health but also dealing with subjects such as parasocial relationships with non-existent (or perhaps it would be better to say non-sentient) entities like game characters.

It's a modern classic! Granted, uncharitable sorts might argue it started a somewhat unwelcome trend of western-developed visual novels that felt the need to be self-consciously subversive, insincere and ironic, but it can't really be blamed for what other people did in its wake; Doki Doki Literature Club itself, despite deliberately subverting a lot of classic visual novel/dating sim tropes in the name of telling what is essentially a horror narrative, is a well-written piece of work that makes good use of its medium (and the unique characteristics of that medium) to engage the player and get them thinking about how they are interacting with the characters involved.

Make no mistake, it goes to some dark places — its ESRB M/PEGI 18 ratings are well-deserved, though for those about to make an assumption about it being a visual novel, these ratings are not due to any sexual content. Rather, it gives an uncompromising look at mental health matters, and that sometimes there is no "winning", particularly when you are attempting to support someone else through a difficult time in their life, rather than taking command of your own destiny.

But there's the thing: it's already got those ratings, which make it suitable for worldwide distribution, along with various other ratings from other worldwide ratings bodies, such as CERO in Japan (where, interestingly, it only netted a "C" rating — an equivalent to 15/16 ratings elsewhere in the world) and it is, at this point, widely agreed to be a worthwhile work of art. For Google Play to suddenly decide that it is unacceptable is… bizarre, but not entirely unexpected, sadly.

Those who follow certain corners of the Internet may be aware that there has been a lot of unrest surrounding Visa and MasterCard seemingly interfering with online purchases of late — particularly when those purchases relate to adult (and specifically sexual) content. Naturally, this put sex workers, erotic artists, adult performers and makers of adults-only games in a somewhat difficult position, as it was making it significantly more difficult for them to make a living.

These things always start with porn, because porn is easy to attack. It's the thing that, while people might talk about it openly on the Internet, is still a great taboo in society — and one that is difficult to defend, particularly when you're talking to people who aren't breathing Internet fumes all day. Who wants to be the one standing up and saying that yes, porn is fine and good and should be protected just as with any other form of creative expression? Don't you know that porn is exploitative, and no-one gets involved in it willingly?

While I won't deny that there are parts of the sex work industry — speaking very broadly here — which are exploitative, in the modern day we live in an at least somewhat enlightened age where there are plenty of people who choose to get involved in various forms of adults-only entertainment because they like doing it. Not just because they like having sex, either; consider the artists, who just enjoy drawing naked people because, it turns out, they're good at it — to name just one example.

Why am I talking about porn? Because there are some who fear that Visa and MasterCard's at least partially successful encroachment into determining what it is and is not "acceptable" for people to get their rocks off to in the privacy of their own homes will mean that they will then start looking at what they might consider to be other forms of "unacceptable" media. Media that, say, tells the stories of marginalised groups, or which deals with challenging themes that society would rather we just swept under the rug.

Doki Doki Literature Club is not porn. But it being suddenly branded as "unacceptable" on a platform as big as Google Play sets a worrying precedent — one that people need to stand up and object to, forcefully. Thankfully, the game is still available on a variety of other platforms, including iOS, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC — but for how long?

"[Doki Doki Literature Club] is widely celebrated for portraying mental health in a way that meaningfully connects deeply with players around the world, helping them to feel heard, understood and less alone on their journey," says creator Dan Salvato. "Managing to achieve that — making a truly meaningful difference by using the power of fiction to connect to others — is what I'm most grateful for. It inspires me every day to keep making cool new things, things that can really reach others, especially those in need of connection."

It's an important piece of work that does not deserve to be silenced, so I sincerely hope Salvato and Serenity Forge are able to get the situation resolved as soon as they can — without having to compromise on the work they have created.

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This is an unpopular opinion, I know, because people love how much work Hello Games has put into No Man's Sky since its rather tepid launch ten years ago (which I rather enjoyed!) and from certain angles, this outlook probably looks a tad ungrateful, particularly as the last ten years of updates to the game have all been completely free rather than paid expansions or DLC.

I'm not denying that it is an admirable thing that the team behind the game have done — and to be honest, I'm most impressed that they've been able to make continually updating their ten-year old product somehow if not profitable then at least sustainable, with the studio only releasing one new game in the meantime — but… it's just too much.

No Man's Sky was already a sprawling, expansive sandbox game when it first launched. No, it perhaps wasn't quite what had been promised in the initial hype cycle, but it did have value, and it did feel like it had a clear artistic vision behind it; just one that wasn't particularly well appreciated. With every new major update, though, I feel like the game just gets more and more unwieldy — and, more to the point, potentially impenetrable to anyone either starting it for the first time, or anyone coming back to it after a long break.

This is where I am. I like the idea of No Man's Sky. I like the idea of a modern sandbox space sim. But I think you can put too much game in your game. If I were to boot No Man's Sky up now — and I could, I own a copy on Steam! — I would have absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing, what systems I was supposed to be engaging with, what was worthwhile doing, what was outdated and not really worth bothering with. And the game wasn't exactly forthcoming with a coherent sense of "this is what you're supposed to do in this game" from the outset.

You can probably say the same for any game that has evolved and changed over the course of a long period, of course. I tried Phantasy Star Online 2 when it first launched in English, and found it completely unapproachable, because the English version launched with a good 10 years of Japanese updates and additional material already loaded into it from the outset. Likewise, I'm sure Final Fantasy XIV probably seems rather daunting to anyone considering joining it for the first time now — though I will note that FFXIV has always been quite good about trickling out your access to its various features according to your progress through the main story, rather than immediately throwing you in at the deep end and bombarding you with a thousand possible things to do from the very beginning. (Final Fantasy XI is another matter, mind.)

To be clear: I don't begrudge anyone their apparently ongoing enjoyment of No Man's Sky, nor do I wish any ill on Hello Games for continuing to support what has turned out to be their flagship release. I'm just saying that I find it completely and utterly overwhelming, and I'm not sure I'm ever going to return to it at this point.

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There was a bizarre piece on Rock, Paper, Shotgun earlier desperately attempting to convince fans of single-player games — and particularly stealth games — that they should give Marathon a go. I found it rather unconvincing. While I sort of get the core conceit — that you can play solo, and that you can treat the other players as if they are particularly intelligent "enemies" — it just rang hollow to me, and it bothered me a bit.

Thing is, I often tend to find I like the idea of multiplayer games more than the actual execution of them — because more often than not, I've found that out of necessity, multiplayer games have to cut out things that I specifically like about single-player games, like, say, lengthy story sequences. Final Fantasy XIV eventually had to make certain cutscenes non-skippable to prevent impatient players racing ahead while others were trying to enjoy key story moments, for example — and many other multiplayer games simply eschew ongoing narrative altogether, lest the people you're playing with get bored waiting for you to watch a cutscene.

I just haven't found a game that really clicks with me, other than my early years with Final Fantasy XIV a while back. And so many of them are designed to be timesink "lifestyle" games that are desperate to be the only thing you play. Battle passes, experience levels, lootboxes, all that junk — all of it's designed to keep you playing that game and that game alone, and honestly, I get to a point where I find repeating the same thing over and over again, which is what you end up doing in a lot of multiplayer games, to be rather tedious.

And yet I still feel like I would enjoy playing something together with a like-minded group. I still feel like it would be nice to have a group of online friends that I can enjoy something alongside. I just don't really know what that game would look like at this point, because I suspect the sort of thing that fulfils what I'm looking for — something reasonably social, not based on bullying, and which doesn't demand you make that game your entire personality if you want to have a good time with it — doesn't really exist.

Oh well. It's not as if I'm short of single-player things to enjoy. It'd just be nice to find something I enjoy that would help me make some friends — or indeed be able to have fun with my few remaining existing friends.

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Following Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death, I've started a VN that's been on my shelf for a very long time, but which I've not yet got around to. It's called WorldEnd Syndrome, and it's by the same company as Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death. In fact, it supposedly unfolds in the same narrative "universe", though exactly what that means is so far not clear; the main setting and core cast are different, so I suspect it may just be a case of the two games having a similar overall vibe.

One of the things I really like about visual novels is the fact it feels like you're really getting to spend some quality time with a (hopefully) interesting cast of characters — characters who you will doubtless have an initial reaction to, and may well change your opinion of over the course of a complete story that involves them. This was certainly the case with Path of Mystery: A Brush With Death, which has an excellent ensemble cast who have a lot of chemistry with one another, and plenty of interesting things to learn about them. The only unfortunate thing is that the concluding hours of the story are very much setting up a sequel and possibly a larger series of multiple games, and so I was left rather wanting more at the end of proceedings!

As someone who has often suffered loneliness, and who has difficulties with self-esteem and confidence when even contemplating socialising with real people out in the real, three-dimensional world, visual novels have always provided a certain sense of comfort. By their very nature, they include you in a close-knit group of people, and give you a sense of "belonging" — even if the way their narrative is constructed makes it clear that you are not the protagonist yourself; you just happen to be riding along in their head, able to hear their innermost thoughts.

A lot of visual novel writers are clearly wise to this particular appeal element of the medium, too, as many of them are set up with characters designed to be varying degrees of relatable, dealing with real-life issues that anyone can understand — and that is comforting. Although the people involved are not real, knowing that someone is aware enough of feelings that you have had to be able to compose a story that involves and acknowledges those feelings — and perhaps even provides some suggestions on how to cope with them (or how not to cope with them) — is reassuring and, in its own way, helps counter some of the loneliness the modern age brings with it.

I'm looking forward to seeing how WorldEnd Syndrome unfolds. I'm only a short way into it so far — still in the introduction, very clearly — but it's already intriguing, and from what I understand, this one does some interesting things with narrative structure. So I might just go and read a bit before bed, now…

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The post #oneaday Day 664: Visual novels! appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

There's a weird sort of culture a lot of people have about not talking about where they work. I understand it to an extent — if people know where you work, that can open you up to harassment as a result of something your workplace did or announced, plus people can (incorrectly) assume that anything you post on a personal account or site is you somehow acting as a "spokesperson" for that brand. In less enlightened workplaces, too, management can spy on the things you do in your free time and inevitably make the least charitable interpretation of the things you say possible so that they have ammunition to treat you like shit at work.

Thankfully I have not suffered the latter for a good few years now, and I am using this paragraph to make abundantly clear that although I work for Blaze on the Evercade project and related products, this post is my opinion only and does not, in any way, reflect the opinions, values and anything else about my employer. I am writing this post 'cause I love Evercade, and have done since I took a chance and splashed the cash on that "All-In" bundle back in 2020.

Anyway, what I want to do today is pick 10 Evercade cartridges I particularly like and share them with you. There may be some cartridges in this list that are no longer available due to the expiration of licensing agreements between Blaze and the license holders, or all manner of other circumstances, and I make no apologies for this; something good doesn't stop being good just because you can't buy it as easily any more.

With all that in mind then, let us begin:

Namco Museum Collection 1

Although both Namco Museum Collection cartridges for Evercade have not been available for a while due to Namco deciding to be extremely weird about releasing their stuff on physical media these days, they remain highlights of the Evercade's launch lineup — and since they formed the part of several launch bundles, there are a fair few copies out there to be found relatively easily.

I have a tough time picking a favourite out of the two, but on balance I think it has to be the first one, which features some all-time classics and favourites, plus some interesting curiosities. On the classics front, you have good versions of Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Xevious and Mappy, while on the lesser-known front you have the excellent (and surprisingly accessible) strategy game, Metal Marines, plus the awesome space sim Star Luster. And this is just my personal favourites from the cart; there's also Mappy Kids, Libble Rabble, Battle Cars and Quad Challenge, too, making it a well-rounded and fun collection.

Data East Collection 1

If there's one cartridge I feel like I plop in the Evercade more than any other, it has to be Data East Collection 1, for two main reasons: Burnin' Rubber and Midnight Resistance. Both are truly excellent games for very different reasons, but they do have one thing in common: great music.

That's not all that Data East Collection 1 offers, though. There's the beat 'em up action of Bad Dudes and its spiritual sequel Two Crude Dudes, a good version of BurgerTime, the excellent (if totally unrealistic) pool game Side Pocket, the manic puzzler Magical Drop 2, the colourful platformer Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics and the one-on-one fighters Karate Champ and Fighter's History. All of these games have something worthwhile to offer in 2026.

Jaleco Collection 1

Jaleco is one of those publishers I feel people often forget about, but when you look at their library of stuff you realise they've actually put out a lot of bangers over the years. Jaleco Collection 1 features some stars from their console lineup, including the beat 'em ups Brawl Brothers and Rival Turf!, the firefighting action-adventure The Ignition Factor, the sci-fi top-down run-and-gun Operation Logic Bomb and more.

I don't think I've ever loaded up Bases Loaded but I believe it's a relatively well-regarded baseball game from the 8-bit era, and likewise for soccer with Super Goal! 2. Super Earth Defense Force is a solid scrolling spaceship shooter, Astyanax and Totally Rad are decent 8-bit platformers, and City Connection is a really fun arcade-style game that only really suffers due to its excruciating music. There's not a bad game in this bunch, so I come back to this cart frequently.

Gaelco Arcade 1

The two Gaelco Arcade cartridges are some of my all-time favourites from the Evercade library, but I think the first one just about has the edge in terms of the number of games I keep coming back to. My personal standouts are the brilliant World Rally, which has possibly the best handling of any isometric racer of the era; the unusual gameplay of Glass; and the wonderfully silly run-and-gun action of Biomechanical Toy.

If you're unfamiliar with Gaelco — and I'd forgive you if you are, since I'd never heard of them prior to us putting this cart out — this is a great way to get to know them. Expect polished visuals, challenging gameplay and some truly excellent digitised guitar noodling.

Renovation Collection 1

This one won't come as a surprise to anyone, as it's an oft-cited favourite from many longstanding Evercade fans. Featuring an extremely cool range of 16-bit games, many of which have an awesome anime style about them, there's a ton of value on this cart. Highlights for most are Valis and Valis III, El Viento and Arcus Odyssey, but there's plenty more to enjoy here, too.

Gaiares and Sol-Deace are good (if very tough) shoot 'em ups. Granada and Final Zone are great multidirectional shooters. Dino Land is a fun and quirky take on pinball. Traysia is a solid RPG if you go into it with the appropriate expectations (it's channelling Ultima, hard). Beast Wrestler is the weak link for many, but I bet you can find some fun there if you try hard enough.

TheC64 Collection 1

In the absence of some good Atari 8-bit cartridges — we haven't yet got a commercially licensable Atari 8-bit emulator we're happy to work with just yet — I will have to satisfy myself with its great rival, the Commodore 64. Fortunately, the three C64 collections we've put out to date include some of my all-time favourite games, and while I will always prefer the Atari versions in most cases, the C64 versions are good, too.

My personal highlights in this collection are Lee (originally Bruce Lee but now not for hopefully obvious reasons), Jumpman and Gateway to Apshai. There's a really broad mix of games in here, including some real legends (Impossible Mission!) — plus the two "Games" games are great with friends. I know home computer games are a hard sell for some people who grew up with consoles, but honestly, the three C64 collections plus the Thalamus cartridge are a great in-road for the curious.

Duke Nukem Collection 1

It felt like we'd finally hit the big-time with this cartridge. Duke Nukem is a huge license to land, and the fact we got the excellent Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered as an exclusive was, for me, the moment we had really got a proper "killer app" for Evercade.

Duke Nukem 1+2 Remastered is, of course, great, and probably the best way to play these shareware classics today. Duke Nukem 3D: Total Meltdown has its detractors, particularly as there are more recent ports of Duke3D that run more smoothly and control a bit more elegantly with a controller, but it's one of those things where if you take it on its own merits and consider that it was running on a platform that, despite having a 3D focus, was still just a little underpowered, is actually perfectly competent and enjoyable. The exclusive levels are a hoot, too — if extremely tough!

Sunsoft Collection 2

Sunsoft is one of those developers that, again, I suspect few people would count among their absolute favourites, but they have a really solid back catalogue of titles to draw upon. This second collection of their games is my personal favourite, primarily due to the presence of the excellent Ufouria: The Saga, which is a truly great exploration platformer.

I'm also a big fan of Pri Pri Primitive Princess!, which is an interesting puzzle game that very much feels like it may have been a home computer game at some point in the past. By this I mean that it's clunky but creative, and if you come at it with the right mindset you'll be well and truly hooked.

Toaplan Arcade 3

I knew I wanted — no, needed — to include a Toaplan Arcade cartridge in this list, and after much deliberation I settled on this third one, primarily for Batsugun and its variant, Batsugun Special Version. Out Zone and FixEight are a hoot, too, Truxton II is just as punishing as its predecessor (but fun once you get into its groove), Ghox is a weird but cool take on Breakout, and Vimana is probably the company's most accessible shoot 'em up.

Toaplan's arcade games are among some of my favourites in the Evercade library, and this is an excellent cartridge full of some of their best titles.

The Turrican Collection

Despite being a home computer gamer in the '80s and early '90s, Turrican is a series that completely passed me by. I always saw gushing praise for it in magazines of the era, but never actually got around to playing it myself. I don't think I ever even played a demo for it. This is a shame, because with The Turrican Collection I've discovered that I like Turrican a lot.

I've also discovered that, unsurprisingly, those who criticise it for having sprawling, meandering levels in which it's easy to get lost were exaggerating somewhat; there's always a clear path forwards, and whether or not you go exploring for goodies is up to you. Plus as the series goes on, it settles into a more "Japanese-style" linear formula, culminating in the technically gorgeous Super Turrican 2. Absolutely banging soundtrack, too.

And there we are. Ten of my favourite carts. Ten of my favourite carts. They might not be yours. But they are mine. And, honestly, if you asked me on another day, I could probably pick out ten more favourites, and repeat the process many times over. In fact, I can find something to love on every single Evercade cartridge — and I'm not just saying that 'cause I work on them. I really am thrilled to do what I do — and I hope that comes across in my contributions to the products in question!

Now after all that, I think I'll go boot one of these up and have a nice retro evening…

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 663: Ten of my favourite Evercade cartridges appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

That announcement was for Evercade Nexus, a new Evercade handheld featuring a much bigger, brighter screen, significantly louder speakers, dual analogue sticks and a host of other cool features. You can see the trailer here:

Evercade has always been a platform that plays a wide variety of retro games — the library actually covers six different decades (from the 1970s up until today) — but Nexus has been designed with a bit of a '90s flavour, hence the somewhat different look and feel to the new trailer. The dual analogue sticks are designed to complement 3D games from the 32-bit era that we already have in the library (and have planned for the future), as well as our upcoming brand new native ports of 64-bit legends like Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, and these games all hail from the '90s, so it makes sense for the branding to reflect that.

You can still play classic Atari games on it as well, though, (plus, of course, all the other classic consoles the Evercade library covers!) and the bright colours found in your average old-school pixel art title will look lovely on that screen — plus with the all-new extra-loud speakers, you can subject everyone in the vicinity to the sound of Pitfall Harry and/or Lara Croft falling to their death for the umpteenth time.

I've said it before, but I'm super proud to work on Evercade. Ever since I first went for the "All-In" bundle of the original handheld back in 2020, which came with the first 10 cartridges released for the platform, I knew it was something special — and hoped that one day I would be able to be part of it. Well, now I am part of it — I have been for some time, and will hopefully continue to be for a long time yet — and it's a delight to be able to look at a product like the Nexus and think that I played a part in that, along with every cartridge release we do.

It's an interesting feeling to have lived long enough to remember these games from first time around vividly enough to still be excited about helping rerelease them on a new device. I never stopped loving games like (Bruce) Lee, MegaMania, Checkered Flag and myriad others — it's a genuine privilege to have been part of making official rereleases happen. Right now I'm working on the Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie double pack that is bundled in with Nexus, and it's hard work, but also immensely rewarding when I think about how good this release is going to be when it's finished.

And there are many more exciting games coming down the road — including a bunch more of my all-time favourites. I can't wait to share them with you all, and if you're new to Evercade, I hope you'll consider jumping on board with Nexus or one of our other devices! Preorders for Nexus open tomorrow — you can find out more here.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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